Introducing
iDock Features
• Interactive message display
• Dock equipment counters and information
• Dome button technology for ease of use
• Advanced 3-color light communication system
Learn More at: LoadingDockSystems.com/iDock
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
iDock Controls Half McGuire.pdf 1 8/30/2018 4:22: 51 PM
with its growing volumes and incessant price demands,
adds unwanted friction to the intermodal chain, according
to an industry executive who asked not to be identified.
There have been more than a few episodes where intermodal train speeds and dwell times have been gummed up
by Amazon shipments that are brought late to origin ramps
and by shipments that sit at destinations for days, and
sometimes weeks, before they are picked up and hauled to a
warehouse, the executive said. “Amazon is like an unguided
missile” as far as service reliability is concerned, the executive said.
What’s more, Amazon expects the type of high-end service that is normally reserved for a customer like UPS but
wants access to the lower rates typically obtained by more
traditional trucking firms that don’t have such time-sen-sitive transit needs, the executive added. Amazon did not
respond to a request for comment.
UPS’S CHALLENGES
UPS faces several challenges of its own in maintaining strong
relationships with the railroads. It can build unit trains
dedicated only to its loads and position the traffic to run
on high-density rail lanes. However, consistently executing
such a feat is difficult even for a business of UPS’s prowess.
Another is doing business with railroads that may have
become complacent in regard to intermodal and may not
have an all-in attitude toward investment in the category.
Of the six primary North American railroads—the four
U.S. rails and Canadian carriers Canadian National Inc.
(CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP)—only BNSF,
Norfolk Southern, and CN have demonstrated a willingness
to invest “in a big way to secure intermodal growth in units
of traffic,” according to Jim Blaze, a long-time rail consul-
tant and author. CSX, in particular, shows little interest in
cultivating intermodal business, Blaze added.
Blaze said that UPS should focus its team-driver strategy
on lanes where it “detects intelligence suggesting the rail
carrier in a lane or two is just too profitable and happy with
its current intermodal results.”
With intermodal business strong in general so far this
year, the ramifications of the UPS-Teamster contract lan-
guage may not yet be on a railroad’s radar. Rail executives
may not say publicly that they are concerned by the threat
of UPS’s diversion. But costing experts deep in the rails’
corporate bowels may be revising their spreadsheets to
account for a possible hit from the loss of UPS traffic.
Accustomed to seeing numbers that include dependable,
high-volume, and high-margin traffic, they might start ask-
ing some questions and raising red flags. As one source said,
“They don’t want to lose UPS.”
