re: The Class I freight railroads have gotten ridiculously bad

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a locomotive engineer isn't making THAT much. Look at for example riverboat captains.

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i have no clue to what pilots make, but at csx, some engineers are making about 125 to 130 a year. That is 12 hrs every day

I've asked this on a few of these train threads and I have yet to get a clear answer.

How is pissing off your customers and dramatically dropping customer service going to work in the long term?

Or, is it they view them self as having monopoly qualities and customers don't have any other options?

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It may be working against the union, but as a whole having 2-3 men on a multimillion dollar vehicle hauling millions of $$$s of good across the country can't be a major labor cost. Mathematically it just doesn't work out.

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Labor has pretty much always been RR's main cost followed by fuel. I think fuel may have overtaken labor in the past few years.

Look at it this way: if you ran 100 trains a day with 2 crew members making $500 each = $100k/day in crew costs.

Now "run bigger trains" with the same amount of carloads being moved. 75 trains with 1 crew member making the same $500 = $37.5k.

I'm not championing for PSR because it has negatively affected my life more than I would like but I can at least see the reasoning behind it.

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Or, is it they view them self as having monopoly qualities and customers don't have any other options?

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Pretty much it. A lot of the customers only have 2 options Rail or truck. Rail is probably cheaper even with the shitty service and downtime.

Doesn’t Warren Buffet own several railroads.

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Doesn’t Warren Buffet own several railroads.

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Just the Bnsf, which is arguably the best out of the domestic 4. Which is basically like pointing out the least smelly turd.

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It may be working against the union, but as a whole having 2-3 men on a multimillion dollar vehicle hauling millions of $$$s of good across the country can't be a major labor cost. Mathematically it just doesn't work out. These guys aren't being paid airline pilot wages either, a locomotive engineer isn't making THAT much. Look at for example riverboat captains

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Are you thinking only of take home pay?
Don't forget benefits such as pension and healthcare?

I work for Uncle Pete (10 years now) and yes there is absolutely nothing precision or scheduled with the railroad. Their crew shortage is directly related to the company keeping the boards short staffed. There are plenty of people on the bump boards that want to mark up and work but up isn't adding any extra turns to the boards when they are exhausted and no one available to work. Their plan to meter traffic on customers is ridiculous because the only reason customers are putting requesting more cars is for to the cars they due have not reaching their destination on time. So they try to add more cars to offset the transit time between origin and destination which does cause more traffic buildup on the rail but if they staffed the boards accordingly then they would have enough people to work and not have trains tied down in sidings waiting for crews to be rested.

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Are you thinking only of take home pay?
Don't forget benefits such as pension and healthcare?

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Those are all included in labor cost. I fully understand those union guys have a significant portion of their labor cost tied into benefits and pension.

You look at FedEx and 2-3 pilots fly one plane, a train with probably 25% labor cost as a plane is moving how many planes worth of cargo? 10?

ETA: I think Covid has made train issues worse and they are falling back on old outdated policies of less labor cost is better, when in reality increasing their customer service and man power would allow them to move more and charge more to more than make up for the costs.

PSR is based on maximum return on capital. Railroads are extremely capital intensive so to make reductions there, crews/tracks/car/locomotives/etc impacts service while it can actually help the bottom line.

To put it in simplest terms, they want to haul only the highest revenue loads with the longest haul. Preferably in unit trains, an entire train made up of the same thing from one origin to one destination, as their crews costs are the lowest on those.

This really isn't new, but PSR has taken it to a whole new level. In the past an operating ratio around 70% was considered fantastic. Last I saw, and I do not follow closely at all, Canadian Pacific was in the mid 50's.

If you have a carload/carloads that do not contribute 50% to the bottom line they don't have much interest and you will get service when they feel like it. If you are lucky.

I got out over ten years ago as it was going to hell then. They've since gone to the same hourly pay that was pioneered on CN by EHH. I was making 6 figures when I left on the old mileage bases agreement. The idiots signed up for the hourly of around $55/hour, not sure what it is now, which gave up all of their work rules. Some guys made more, some a lot more and some made about the same with the new rules but now they are essentially working 12 hour days 6 days a week.

Glad I left. Loved running trains but hated the pricks I worked for. It's worse now.