The Class I freight railroads have gotten ridiculously bad

As some know I work for a very large retailer that sells a lot of bulk product. A good portion of our bulk freight is shipped by rail.

This past Friday we received a notice from the Union Pacific that due to "supply chain challenges stemming from the pandemic" they were mothballing 1000 boxcars and 1000 flatcars - amid an already short supply of boxcars. This comes after they announced they were putting caps on annual customer carloads. These actions are essentially blaming shippers for their executive decision to drive the railroad into the ground by implementing PSR and firing half of their crews and tearing up yard track, as well as putting good motive power into storage.

The CSX can't even regularly show up for a 5 day/week switch, and they subsequently charge demurrage out of the arse for railcars sitting idle on days that they did not service the building. When we dispute the charges they will claim that the blue flag (warning marker that our associates put on the rails to tell the train crews that the cars were being unloaded) was up, when it was clearly not, and turn down the dispute.

Both of these railroads have in turn implemented strict employee attendance policies that punishes anyone for taking mere hours off. The UP was named America's worst employer for 3 years in a row by Glassdoor.

The BNSF and NS are only slightly less awful.

PSR has ruined railroads in the name of shareholder dividend boosting. I'm pretty pro-free market and anti-regulation, but you have to wonder if at some point the feds step in and put a stop to this shite. The railroads' god-awful service is a huge reason why we're seeing the current amount of domestic supply chain issues.