Subject: Union Pacific, UPS, Meltdown.
Thought you guys might be interested in this:
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 10:07:49 -0700
From: "Huggins, Michael" michael.huggins@schwab.com
Subject: UP Screwing up UPS' Bullet Trains and shipping by Truck
The word is starting today and going for at least four weeks UPS on UP will be operated as follows:
Hot day traffic between Little Ferry, NJ and Los Angeles will be trucked at UP expense in both directions. That would be the Tuesday bullet trains on UP and CSX.
Hot day traffic between Memphis, Dallas and Los Angeles will be operated over the highway at UPS expense.
Cold day traffic between Los Angeles and Bergen (20 to 40 trailers per day, four days per week) will be handled by BNSF.
BNSF is almost at capacity on its transcon and does not want this business back. The business growth is overwhelmingly China boxes and U.S. truckload stuff - not high priority goods. With more and more of these 8000-foot double stack trains running on the Transcon, it's harder and harder to keep them moving when the Z trains are overtaking them every hour. The UPS NYC-LA business that BNSF is again hauling for at least the next four weeks will be added to existing Willow Springs-Los Angeles trains.
This is all happening because UP is having another meltdown on the Sunset Route in and out of LA in general. On Sunday it is reported that 55 trains - 30 westbound and 25 eastbound - between El Paso and Long Beach that were either sitting on sidings or waiting for a chance to leave Long Beach. Is the Alameda corridor not working. Yet they can get engineering specials over the road in record times.
