TrainWatcher wrote:
Mike, we are talking 2 different things. You make CROSSOVERS and my BorgWarner plant makes 4x4 and TRUCK parts. TRUCKS, are going to be decreasing, although it was announced today the company won the bid for the new Toyota Tundra 4 speed. More work for me
My point was, that nothing is slowing down this year so far. Flint Truck has at least 14 Saturdays scheduled at the moment. So I'm not sure who said GM was gonna decrease production but for the time being it's not so
Of course this was all a couple of weeks ago before all this crap about recalls happened.
That might explain all the crossovers and Silverados that just got stored in the parking lot near my house, glad to see it's GM and Chevys and not Ford F150's
Mike H wrote:
Crude oil has nothing to do with major congestion or railcar shortages unless your talking about companies wanting to lease tank cars.
You're right in so far as car type. You are incorrect on it causing "congestion". It is sapping crew bases with the almost overnight explosion of traffic. Other traffic sits to move the 'hot' oil trains. Traffic sits clogging up terminals and mainlines, and that adds to the issue. That's where it causes problems. That is the argument of shippers out in the Dakotas right now. BNSF is putting so much focus on running the oil trains, the grain trains are sitting for extended periods of time. But...lack of crews is to cause for that. So, you can't say that all the oil traffic doesn't have an impact on operations. Yes, winter is a big cause of the congestion, but train priority does affect it too.
Practice Safe CSX
I will agree with you that crude oil is causing congestion on BNSF & a little for CP in the Dakotas, but that's the only place its having a major impact. Maybe its different on CSX, but on our railroad the priority trains are without a doubt intermodal then grain trains. Crude is way down the list, we run them usually as 700 series trains which as you probably know means "go in the hole".
I am working on an opportunity to move a 100 car train every single day which essentially means two trains per day (one load/one empty) & we had no issue with crews or power. Considering how tight we typically run on crews that surprised me, but it boils down to if marketing let's operations know what kind of traffic to expect & operations has their act together, a few crude trains a day doesn't mean much.
