OKB

Sounds like you're just a good for nothing layabout.

I see BNSF moving wind turbine parts, military vehicles and coal.  I never see anything else being transported by them.

I have a co-worker that has maxed out his PTO bank and is now in use or lose territory.

He has his leave schedule planned out through next calendar year, while still planning on keeping his PTO bank maxed out.

Although we get "cashed out" of our PTO when we leave the company, unless he very aggressively invested, there is no way he is close to retirement. So he is sitting on 240 hours of PTO for "just in case" something comes up.

BNSF moves more intermodal freight than any other railroad. Obviously that would depend on where you are located. Grain is probably the next largest commodity.

Well you are pretty close to the powder river basin, so no matter what coal is going to dominate.

Question is, are you going by who owns the track, or by what locomotives you see?

Quoted for truth!!

I am the victim of two arbitrated contracts.

I normally think train service are the biggest divas on the RR, (they get extra pay if the A/C doesn’t work).  They make a ton of money and they actually have a strong union.  That said this points system is complete bullshit.

TYE don’t get regular weekends off every single time they take off goes against them with this points system.  After 18 years they have 4 weeks of vacation to use and after 25 years they have five weeks.  Not sure how they are supposed to use all that,  pretty sure it’s use it or lose it, although they may be able to cash it out.  

The rr’s try to run as lean on employees as they can to avoid paying benefits, so they try to run TYE guys 365 if they can.  They even do this when they have people laid off.

No joke. The amount of grain they move out from the farms here is staggering.

Good, trains are outdated.   All the deaths associated with train crossings.  All the noise & polution, the mental stress.  The hell with trains, 90% of what I see are double stacked chinese intermodal trailers.  Let em compete on the road like the  rest of us and no I don't care that you think they are a vital supply chain link, nor do I wanna hear those chinese intermodal trailers will plug up the road if they don't sit on the train cars.. I don't care.

Trains are the single most efficient form of land transportation known to man. Fuck your trucks.

And if you think train noise is stressful rather than "cool! a train!", that is your fault for being a boring idiot.

There are LOTS of people who abuse FMLA.  I've worked in 4 different crafts and have seen it abused in every single one.

They work the minimum to maintain benefits and abuse FMLA to maximize time off.



Unfortunately, you're not at the heart of the network.  The two major arteries are LA --> Chicago and PNW --> Chicago.  The TX and southeast markets have also seen strong growth in recent years.

Guess those sweet, sweet .gov railroad benefits are not worth it anymore.

Here it’s coal, intermodal, some heavy equipment, and prior to Boeings 737 woes, 737 fuselages.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


Whut.

Even with all the downsides, there is no method to move freight over land more cost or time efficient than RR. Absolutely none. The tonnage of even one freight train is staggering.

You... want more trucks on the highway.. Does it hurt being that dumb?

100% of trucking jobs will have been automated for a century before we ever see trains start to go away, lol

Trains (for cargo) are fantastic.

The railroad industry and everything it entails (the rail companies, the government oversight, the union, etc), is a complete and utter clusterfuck and needs to be nuked from orbit so it can be started again properly.

People like him give the rest of us truckers a bad name. I don’t haul OTR, but I guarantee I haul more and far heavier loads, I love watching the trains at crossings, and if your dumb enough to challenge a train you deserve what you get. Last point I’d like to make, there is a sever shortage of truck drivers now, I got to ask, what the hell would happen if trains were all parked tomorrow?

Mediocre trolling… or he’s actually that stupid and still requires a sippy cup. Hard to tell nowadays.

Brandon would order us back to work. If anyone listens to him would be the question.

This will be in the running for most ignorant post of the week.    

A simplistic online article of the typical freight train -

https://trainconductorhq.com/how-much-does-a-train-weigh/

Let’s just say the actual freight tonnage is 8,000 tons, leaving out the equipment tonnage - that’s sixteen million pounds of freight. Let’s never mind unit trains (grain/aggregate/coal) which are much heavier.

That would be a lot of trucks and their ancillary costs to replace a train.

It's only Monday, things will get much worse.

Seems a lot of places are trying to tighten up their attendance policies lately given the number of people calling in sick.  

 

Eventually, a lot of companies are going to have to start acting like companies trying to make a profit again, instead of the government-subsidized adult day care that shit has morphed in to over the last two years.

That’s what I believe they’re doing as well. They are intentionally gutting themselves for max profit (for a small select group), then running to uncle sugar complaining about how they’re hurting so bad.

ETA: The Ouroboros but without any connotations of infinity.

Pretty sure this is trolling, but do you work strictly on-call 24/7/365, with no "weekends"?   Do you work very erratic start and end times (no weekly scheduled hours), travelling to a hotel every other day?  ie on Monday go in at 3am, get off duty around 2-4pm, then go to the hotel to stay the night and it shows your next on duty time at 1am on Tues, so you get some rest, then wake up at 11pm only to find out now its pushed back to 7am on Tue..   then finally you go on duty at 8am and get home at 9pm, and you've been gone two full days, and we're not even at Wednesday yet.  And you got Timmy's school thing you missed on Tuesday, and church dinner on Wednesday that you're hoping to make because you missed the last 5 of them, you need to get do some work on your wife's vehicles, etc...    For many railroaders, their only "time off" at home is their 10 hours after they just clocked out, unless they use a "sick day".  But who needs sleep, right?

At least for most airline pilots are gone a few days, then home a few days, you can plan to do things on your time at home (which is also uninterupted).  They typically set their schedule one month prior and bid on their trip schedule.  The railroad really doesn't exist this way (except for a few terminals that do have a "predictive work schedule").    

BNSF has cut down on "allocations" meaning how many people can be off on a day.  A sick day (which is unpaid) can pretty much always be used, but if you are trying to take a paid day which won't go against your availability. So if the one or two other guys already have preapproved paid day off, your only chance now to take off on that day is unpaid (which goes against your availability).

Some railroaders on that work do have a resemblence of a schedule, but for the avg person that works M-F 8-5, they really can't understand it reading a few posts on the internet.  If you sleep in your own bed every night of the week (and you don't change your circadian rhythm every 3 days), it's really hard to understand it.  Not having a weekend to "sleep in" or do family activities, or even basic errands / honey dos, it adds up.

And even the guys that work the yard, on scheduled shifts, just when you think you have your next two weeks planned, then someone bumps you out of the blue and takes that spot.

For the railroaders, "sick time" has been the way for 150+ years for workers to take time off.  It's UNPAID.

So don't go to work for the fucking railroad.

....yes?

You get / for that hot take.

So you're okay with a company unilaterally changing the terms that were initially set forth when you hired out, and telling you take it or leave it?   And especially when that one thing they are changing is how you manage your time off?

Whatever bud.  You do you.  You just want to come in here with a chip on your shoulder, and do some internet arguing.  Some people in here genuinely don't understand why this is a major uproar, but you really don't care.

I have actively told people for years not to hire on to one.

What about those that hired on when it wasn't an easy lifestyle but it wasn't the slave like conditions it's becoming? 15 or 20 of the 30 years required for full railroad retirement. I know you seem to hate unions and I understand that more than you probably realize but the word railroaded exists for a reason. BNSF has made near record profits the last few years and apparently that's not enough. We didn't take weeks off during the pandemic we took our calls and went into work while upper management stayed home. We did it because otherwise you weren't going to be out of toilet paper you'd be living without power in the middle ages. Many young guys were furloughed even before the pandemic and then when the stimulus hit the economy the railroads have been begging for them to come back. I'm not unskilled or uneducated but the amount of money I'd leave on the table is pretty high if I decided to leave now. When you're stuck between golden handcuffs and surviving a job that has a union that's not allowed to strike ever... because your job is too important what do you do?

I have a video of the UPRR using BNSF trackage rights to move a wind turbine parts train in TX

Of course that line, which heads straight to MX was pretty much nonstop intermodal traffic 24/7 (it was lighter by a bit on the weekends).  A few locals into the plant I worked at down there last year with a mix of old rebuild GP units.  

Lots of autoracks then but this was early 2021.

I'm all about moving freight by rail.

Rail companies seem to be in a race to do cool MBA business schemes that might work in another industry but not necessarily apply to how rail has worked.  Of course, that doesn't mean things shouldn't be tried but damn it seems like just about every Class 1 RR has tried to implement radical programs to maximize profit and efficiency even further than what already existed and caused a bit of chaos and more safety incidents than before...because "progress."

In all honestly, it's a downside to a unionized workforce.  There are many benefits to collective bargaining, and there are downsides.  This is one of those downsides.

We are all dumber for having listened to this.

Attached File

You work all the holidays?  Never ever get sick?

My PTOV is capped at 400 hours.  If I don't take time off, I will be working for free.  It sounds like this is what the RR is doing.

"here is your time off, you just can't use it"

I bet you work 5 days a week on mostly a 'regular' schedule, too?

Man, I take every bit of 160 hrs of vacation a year every year on top of working 12s so we are off a lot more than most people.  But I also clear around 900 hrs of ot every year also.

Eta:  I never knew a judge had to rule in favor of a strike, I always thought they were kind of enough workers got tired of a situation and organized.

The Wenatchee yard is just south of our office, and I go by it allot. It’s crazy how much it has slowed since Biden took over, granted the 737 fuselages have stopped before that, but for the longest time no intermodels were really being set up for the trip over the pass, sure see allot of coal going still. Finely seeing some auto transporters moving again. Used to be a traing going either way every 30 minutes, I don’t think it’s even close to that now?

He’d order you back, but if it is like anything else no one will pay attention and we all know he won’t do shit about it.

Google the Rail Labor Act. It's there for a reason and I would say still serves a purpose but IMHO it's gotten to the point over the last 20+ years that strikes are just not allowed ever. It makes actual bargaining one sided and impossible.

For most jobs for TYE on the railroad overtime isn't a thing and that's part of the problem too. They can work you as much as they want in terms of number of starts and hours per month and you're paid at the same rate. The only limitation is mandated rest and the cap of 276 hours a month.

It makes reducing head counts even more attractive than most industries. It's part of the reasons railroads have become much more restrictive in layoffs at the same time that most people are looking for a better work/life balance.

I started in the industry in the early 90s.  Shortline.  We worked 6-7 days a week, 12+ a day, for peanuts - 76.90 a day on a ten hour day and OT after 10 and on your sixth and seventh start per week.

I never missed work.  I remember throwing up off the side of the engine leaving the yard a couple of times because I was sick....but I got the train over the road.

These guys in labor think they have it bad - it's even worse in management.  The expectations are unreal.  A Experience First Line Manager on BNSF is bulletined at $80k/yr.  All the railroads expect managers to be on property 80 hours ish - 100 hours a week, and available 24/7/365.

The railroads were already behind in quality of life in the 90s and have steadily gotten worse and worse.  The only reason they have any employees at all is because there are lots of guys willing to suck it up so they can provide a good paycheck to their family.  Most of those families don't survive the working conditions, then the poor fuckers have to stay to make their child support lol.  

The railroads will have to adapt sooner or later.  My kids make 90k a year and work from home for 40 hours a week doing computer shit right out of college.  What the railroads offer is total shit in comparison to where other industries are at.

This is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen posted on ARFCOM, and I've been here for over 20 years!

What .gov railroad benefits are you talking about?  

Railroad Retirement is administered by the government - but 100% fully funded by the workers and the railroads.  It's even solvent!

Y'all are acting like you've never read a LAWRENCETHOMPSON post before.

Not very familiar with the traffic that far away but we've been very steady overall since the beginning of last year. Close to peak levels then when it was normally a slow time of year. The actual number of employees working is less than before the pandemic mainly do to PSR and running 3

mile long trains. I do know there is limited production of the 737's occurring as I run past the Spirit plant that builds them. They are running them a different route than before, and I think all by themselves which was a change. AFAIK Boeing pays for them to be a priority and for years they

tossed them on the front of "hi priority" mixed freight that was going the same way. From what I've heard they found out and the issue was resolved.


I'd agree to a point but the other problem would be the potential ramifications of an "illegal" strike. The unions could be sued for damages by the carrier and that could much instantaneously bankrupt them. There's a lot of built up anger over the years of the way membership has been

treated by management and for many this is just the last straw. They treat us like we're replaceable when we're not but they've been able to get away with it because the courts.