I work as a shipping broker for a major national company, so some details will not be disclosed here, but I need to vent my frustration. After working on my boss for more than 10 years to ship more by rail, orders finally came down that due to fuel prices, more shipping by rail is in order and to start making the needed arrangements to put more focus on rail movments. This requires changing inventory timing, planning moves and such. I had been expecting to have some service issues with the class ones, but I had expected that traditionally shipper oriented short lines would not be a problem and that they would want the additional business, especially those that, in recent years, have been making public pleas for more traffic and support. BOY WAS I WRONG!! For the most part, the class ones have been pretty good to deal with, some even willing to add days of service or extra switches to meet the need. Most of the shortlines have been good to deal with, but a surprisingly large number of them have been difficult if not impossible to deal with. What follows is some of the more memorable quotes I've accumulated from the not so nice short lines. "O.K., as long as we don't have to work nights or weekends."
"We don't have anywhere to put the cars we have in storage on your spur." "We really only want unit trains." "Our business plan has us focused on ag related products and we have 95% of that traffic and your traffic isn't in our business plan." "You haven't shipped as much as you thought and we can make more storing cars on your siding so we'd rather do that."---(cripes, we just got started and there is a bit of a recession--we do have 150 cars on order though) "You need a new switch into your industry that will cost you $250,000 for starters." (This location: the short line has been using the switch to store it's units on our property while they work on them and use our crane for FREE---this detail may give away the location, but plant manager says it's o.k. as he intends remove the crane.) "You're too far from the interchange point for us to make as much money as we could if you were closer."---(Potential 1500 cars per year here).
"O.K. as long as it fits our existing schedule, existing customers come first so some weeks you might not see us." I'm trying to ship by rail, but certain operators aren't making it easy! the short lines span the spectrum from stand alone independants to member of megga short line owners. Interestingly, parent companies doesn't seem to matter, one line eager for business, yet another owned by the same company not interested at all. Wake up guys!!

Thanks for letting me vent.