All these rail freight problems that we are experiencing and the discussions everyone is having has got me thinking. Does poor rail service have to be our problem. Tom4CWB mentioned trucking our grain to the coast and fertilizer back in another thread. What that means is that our customer doesn’t have to be the local grain buyer or terminal.
All along our customer has been the grain companies. Period. End of story. The rail problem is an elevator company problem that they’ve managed to get us farmers all hepped up about because they just pass their costs and lack of deliveries down to us. We have a situation where an elevator company shipping problem is something that they’ve got farmers on side lobbying for solutions for them. Maybe we need a new customer. People like Parsley have gone one route to avoid rail freight dependent businesses, maybe we can find something that suits us.
All Tom was suggesting is that we bypass one customer who has become unreliable and sell to someone else. Another buyer further away. Sure, our freight costs would go up under his scenario, but maybe there are creative ways like fertilizer backhauls to make it more cost effective. Maybe there are other ways to force railroad companies to actually compete, and I don’t mean the big stick, (we all know how well that works in places like North Korea). Perhaps licencing more people to use the existing rail lines and having them bid for running rights. (I have no idea if this would work either, just brainstorming)
The point is not that I'm saying I know if any of these are good solutions, but that we’ve been bitching about rail service to elevators for years, and nothing ever seems to make things better.
Maybe it’s time to think outside the box and try something else.
All along our customer has been the grain companies. Period. End of story. The rail problem is an elevator company problem that they’ve managed to get us farmers all hepped up about because they just pass their costs and lack of deliveries down to us. We have a situation where an elevator company shipping problem is something that they’ve got farmers on side lobbying for solutions for them. Maybe we need a new customer. People like Parsley have gone one route to avoid rail freight dependent businesses, maybe we can find something that suits us.
All Tom was suggesting is that we bypass one customer who has become unreliable and sell to someone else. Another buyer further away. Sure, our freight costs would go up under his scenario, but maybe there are creative ways like fertilizer backhauls to make it more cost effective. Maybe there are other ways to force railroad companies to actually compete, and I don’t mean the big stick, (we all know how well that works in places like North Korea). Perhaps licencing more people to use the existing rail lines and having them bid for running rights. (I have no idea if this would work either, just brainstorming)
The point is not that I'm saying I know if any of these are good solutions, but that we’ve been bitching about rail service to elevators for years, and nothing ever seems to make things better.
Maybe it’s time to think outside the box and try something else.