That was one of several points emphasized by UP President and CEO Lance Fritz on Wednesday morning as he addressed the Midwest Association of Rail Shippers on the railroad’s efforts to improve its customers’ experience.
The move away from unit trains is part of a “fundamentally changed service that is opening up markets,” he said.
“By co-mingling services and not being so dogmatic about unit-train, boutique service,” Fritz said, “we’ve been able to take frac sand from stops in Minnesota and Illinois and ship it up into the [Powder River Basin] in carload quantity, by tacking it onto the back of empty PRB coal trains. That service product is awesome. We’re giving local producers seven-day-a-week service, and then able to tack on whatever is loaded, and give it reliable, consistent runs in our coal network up to the PRB.”
“In the old days, product that wanted to go to northeast Iowa probably intermodaled to Chicago and then drayed back, at about $1,000 or $1,200 a truck, if you could get it,” Fritz said. “… What we’ve done is created a product where we intermodal to Council Bluffs — it’s an existing service — then it gets on existing manifest service up into Mason City, and interchanges with a short line to get to the intermodal ramp.
“It’s less costly; it’s faster; and it’s highly reliable, because all those services exist, and in general, they’re seven-day-a-week services. That’s awesome. There’s more of that to be had.”
From a volume standpoint, Fritz said, that frac sand business has been “brutal.”
“At one point last year, our year-over-year comps were down 70% or 80%,” he said. “That’s a brutal shift in our reality, and the reality for everyone participating in that market. That’s because local sand was replacing that Northern White, and it was also because the exploration and production companies were pulling in their horns.”
Fritz touted several statistics which he said reflected improved performance under UP’s PSR plan:
— First-mile, last-mile performance, up 11 points; “at historically high levels now;”
— Car trip-plan compliance, up 9 points; “that’s running at about 75% right now, historically high levels;”
— Car dwell is now at 22 hours, down 3 to 4 hours, “and we think we can drive this down to 20, plus or minus;”
— Car velocity, at about 220 miles per day, up 11 miles per day; “if you go from start [of UP’s Unified Plan] to today, that number’s more like 30 or 35 miles;”
— Train velocity, up one-half mile.
That last number, Fritz said, is less important in UP’s current approach.
“In the old world, we used to worship at the altar of train velocity,” Fritz said, “thinking that translated into better service. It doesn’t. Car velocity has a better record of translating into what we say we’re going to do. Car velocity is important because it keeps your network decongested.”
With UP continuing to eliminate hump operations at yards throughout its system, Fritz also offered one example of how it will repurpose the space created by those idled humps.
At Chicago’s Proviso Yard, the land occupied by the hump will be used to expand the adjacent Global 2 Intermodal facility.
“It’s literally on the same footprint as Proviso,” Fritz said. “We’re going to take part of the Proviso hump, part of the bowl, and turn it into an intermodal ramp.
“So we’re going to get a better intermodal ramp. It’s going to get a $75 to $100 million investment; it’s going to be state of the art, and it’s going to be right in the heart of the city, where you want it. We’ve got other opportunities to do that. I think we’ve got an opportunity to try to do that in LA, and in Houston.”
Is this version of PSR just a mixed train daily only much longer? Wow, what innovation! Hey, your numbers are cratering, shippers are voting by using other modes. No matter how you operate the railroad, deliver value added service.
Shippers only care about when will you pick up, when will you deliver, and what does it cost. Dwell time, train velocity, car velocity, and mile traveled per day are not their concern.
Yeah my comment about Fritz’s reference to repeating the Proviso hump conversion to expanding G2 in LA perhaps indicating a new IM yard at West Colton was removed also.
I think this would be a good idea if they can also preblock for SoCal L trains at North Platte, Englewood, and the PNW, with additional flat switching into these blocks in places like Ogden, Santa Teresa, Tucson, Stockton and Fresno.
Steven Bauer’s amusing comment about adding sand loads on the tail end of the coal empties is also gone. And that’s in my mind an important comment (although I don’t see why they couldn’t add them to the head end). Because the PSR super long train of preblocked for destination concept is going to guarantee empties near the head with lots of momentum behind them. Would love to hear the PSR mavens rebut this (not every long PSR train runs with DPUs.
John Rice, were the comments really “lost”, or taken down?
“In the old days, product that wanted to go to northeast Iowa probably intermodaled to Chicago and then drayed back, at about $1,000 or $1,200 a truck, if you could get it,” Fritz said.
So we are talking about a service that is compared to a “probably” example.
What we’ve done is created a product where we intermodal to Council Bluffs — it’s an existing service — then it gets on existing manifest service up into Mason City,”.
So if the services already existed to make this move why wasn’t this done sooner?
“Car velocity, at about 220 miles per day, up 11 miles per day; “if you go from start [of UP’s Unified Plan] to today, that number’s more like 30 or 35 miles;”.
30-35 more miles over 24hrs. That’s what, 30 minutes by truck?
Dwell time down 3 or 4 hours. But when those cars now move on a manifest with multiple work events, and they sit behind other trains working the same yards, is there really any gain? Of course there is but it’s on paper. A car sitting on a train not moving does not show as dwell time.
Car velocity is more important because it keeps the network deongested? Again, if you have multiple trains stopped because they are all trying to work the same yard enroute, that further delays through moves because in double track territory that creates basically a single track railroad for stretches. So is your network really “decongested” or was the congestion just moved somewhere else?
@Steven Bauer: Because the Trainsmag.com news site was down with a 404 error for several hours. Once the news site came back up, I noticed that several news items lost their comments that were posted prior to the outage.
That is why the comment that starts with “Kenneth Hissong?” with no name associated, is referring to a comment made by a former UPRR employee, which is now missing.
My comments on the G&W releasing the ROW to Astoria also were lost and it was the only one posted prior to the site going down.
I don’t think it was a blanket removal, they really did have a technical problem that day (as evidenced by the 404 errors) and probably restored from backup which occurred the day before. For awhile after the 404 error was fixed, it wasn’t allowing any comments to post.
Periodically I notice that the system that stores comments seems to malfunction and goes wonky. The first time I too thought it was an act of moderation, but found later its just a glitch.
Quit focusing on cutting costs and go find new business.
Hey Fritz, you think train velocity has nothing to with car velocity? When you have a train sitting in a passing track an hour because of its length it can not meet anywhere else and those cars are just sitting there. And, you are proud of a train moving 230 miles a day?? Hell, in the 1960’s T&P was running trains 615 miles Ft Worth to El Paso in 16 hours averaging 47 miles per hour with only 135 miles fitted with CTC. So much for you 230 miles.
You got a whole lot more to do to equal 50 years ago.
It appears a page or two of comments were lost when this site went down earlier today. Hopefully they will get restored, but not likely.
They don’t care about train velocity? How do they think cars move between points? Levitation perhaps? And if they don’t care, why did they have officers ride trains to see why velocity was so low? Vena, the COO wanted to know why on so much of a double tracked railroad our velocity was so much lower than CN’s, where he came from.
Of course it had to be the crews’ fault. So many eyes opened when they found out their auto throttle ran trains 10 to 15 mph under track speed in so many places. Or for the one riding with us found out, how we arrived at the terminal and had to wait 20 minutes (which was an unusually short waiting time.) because they don’t want to pay for vans that might sit for awhile between trains.
Here’s an idea to save money. Stop trying to save money. The way they do it, they may save money in one pocket but then they end up paying more from a different pocket.
PSR, lipstick on a pig.
Kenneth Hissong??? Really?? “Sour grape employees”???? Sour grapes over what? Watching your security, your livelihood, your future go down the drain? That oughta give anyone with a pulse some sour grapes!! You say you’re counting on UPRR stock for income??? You’re most definitely the one who should be suffering from a case of the old sour grapes!! The bubble is about to burst, my friend! Time to realign your stock portfolio & pronto!
The 19th floor of 1600 Douglas Street; backstabbing corporate greed at its finest