RAILforum: UP cuts intermodal traffic

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Posted by Mr. Toy (Member # 311) on :

I saw a reference to this UP bulletin on another board. http://dx01.my.uprr.com/pubdir/inetbull.nsf/bdaf570788c7121d06256450007c2df0/9138ed5e418a5cc486256ed00073a496

If I read this correctly UP is eliminating intermodal freight on the I-5 corridor. What does this mean for UP's stockholders, customers, and Amtrak? What does it say about UP's business operations?

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Posted by MPALMER (Member # 125) on :

I read somewhere that these "hot" intermodal trains were too disruptive to the schedules of all the other trains along the route.

Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :

It is basically saying that as a business they consider the cost of keeping the business higher than the return they would get from it. That is the polite version.

More accurately, it is showing that many years of short term thinking is killing the company's long term survival prospects. It is really showing that many years of underinvestment in the facilities needed to move traffic results in traffic increases strangling the system. Somehow, someone must find the courage to tell the stockholders that dividends and unnecessary expenses must be cut so the money can be plowed back into the system for the purpose of prosperity in the long term, not just manipulated to produce a nice showing in the short term by financial ledgermain.