https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/up-suspends-inbound-international-container-shipments-to-chicago-for-a-week/
12 replies (most recent on top)
UP management and board don’t care anything about their employees, what makes you think they would care about the US economy or anything else for that matter? The only thing that matters to them is profits. They are not interested in being good citizens, or a company that works with suppliers. They don’t care about the small/medium size shippers. Everything on the marketing site is a lie. Hopefully the politicians are seeing this and the effect PSR and UP greed are having on the entire economy.
All 80 furloughed in STL have been recalled in the last 24 hours.
Parsec Inc is a intermodal scab loading car company. They replaced union Railroad intermodal workers and so did the
ITS Conglobal out of Darien Ct.
Scabs all over the Railroad.
Halligan is trying to scab out train crews too
Railpros MoW scab out fit for UP and
Metrolink
Is this another win wire story?
Just proves what we all know, all about the money and nothing else!
""Stephens says UP did not move as fast: “UP took a much more measured approach, even as volume in June jumped 40% in Southern California from one week to the next. UP recalled crews and pulled locomotives and cars from storage, too. But UP did so at its own pace because railroads simply can’t handle such sudden swings in volume, UP Chief Operating Officer Jim Vena explained on the company’s earnings call in July.”
“ There was no way I was going to flow trains one way and have all the deadheads and extra costs. We took it on a systematic basis, and we’re fluid now,” Vena said …
Stephens added, “But UP also has used increasingly expensive surcharges in California – first $500 per container, then $1,500, and now a record $3,500, the Journal of Commerce reports – that tell potential low volume customers to hit the highway. This hurts UP’s partners, the intermodal marketing companies it relies on to fill its railroad-supplied containers.”
Stephens wondered about the different responses: “Why would BNSF move heaven and earth to capture volume while UP aimed to tightly manage its capacity?”
He says, “The most obvious answer is that UP’s response was straight out of the Precision Scheduled Railroading [PSR] playbook. Container traffic isn’t a high-margin business. Running empty trains, or repositioning empties, increases your costs and burns crews and locomotives while throwing your network out of balance.”"
Back in Sept Vena refused to DH west to bring trains east to answer the post covid uptick in port traffic.... HAD he responded as a leader wanting to grow his company and help the US economy recover and NOT as a C suite exec trying to meet his Operating Ratio bonus target.....we might have been able to get ahead of this very real problem...
Non union employees in these positions don’t earn enough money to care. When will this company figure out that money talks.
In other words Lance and Vinny done screwed up big and now customers have to pay for their stupidity
Maybe pay more. McDonald's employees make $15.00 an hour now.
Unfortunately being a “scab” has nothing to do this.
Nobody wants to work for the scabs.
UP is contracting with Parker and ITS.
SCABS!