Pete I dont remember lumber in transit.I do recall dealing with sugar and was
amazed at all the roundabout routings just to keep the car moving in the
general direction the shipper wanted until the load was sold. A back issue of
the former Pentrex mag on railroading(somebody help me w/the name) had an
excellent article on the same practice with produce out of Florida from the
clerks perspective.You know the guy who had to keep putting in diversions as
the loads were actually sold.
I suspect that all those joint thru routing agreements that you gave an
example of are history except for unit train stuff(but not totally sure).The
reason I say that is because on newly manufactured cars and cars moving to
dismantlers up until 5 or 6 yrs ago we were quoted one rate for the move and
the carriers divided the funds based on who generated the move and the share
of mileage. Ain't that way any longer. Now each carrier involved quotes his
portion in his own tariff so you end up with multiple freight bills on each
move. Each carrier has a minimum haul whether the car moves 5 miles or up to
around 300 (one price fits all). After that it gets very hard to keep all the
variations straight. Some are based on mileage above the quoted
minimum.Others are figured from postal zip codes! etc,etc. Of course then
there are the short line and terminal line charges if one of them is used.
Leo
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
|