Re: (erielack) Water bottles...

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

You didn't mention the exact timeframe, but by the 1980's, Conrail, like 
most other Class 1's, was focused on large customers and wholesale 
transportation. So if you were a steel mill, coal mine, auto manufacturer, 
freight forwarder/consolidator or containership line, you would have been 
well looked after. Conrail simply didn't maintain a sufficient staff of 
sales people or freight agents to service the shipper of one or a few 
carloads. There isn't enough profit in that, particularly in the shorthaul 
move you offered, so they really didn't want your business and behaved 
accordingly. The retail carload business has become the domain of shortlines 
and regionals.

In future, it would be nice if you could include your first name in your 
post.

Paul B

From: secbyte_@_ptd.net
Subject: Re: (erielack) Water bottles...

Sometimes I wonder if this would be true.

I remember having a business in Dover along the old CNJ line on North
Salem St. and it was next to impossible to get the railroad to add me as
a customer.  First of all it was like pulling teeth to get to the people
I needed to talk to in the first place and then it was one excuse after
another to get things shipped out by boxcar. We spoke to the M&E and to
Conrail.  We were sending huge loads to a recycling plant in Mass and
they would have preferred material shipped by boxcar but it got to be
such a project that we hired a trucking company to service us.  It was
like they just did not want any new business.  In other industry you
loose customers and you develop new ones.  It seemed to me that the RR
was only interested in burning the ones they had up and not developing
new ones.


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