CACH Illinois hub Service Failing milions of packages this week!

In the past, I seem to recall him stating he was in feeders, but there is something about this story that doesn't ring true...

Was CACH backed up? Sure, just like many other parts of the country. Indy is worse than us. We're still processing work for them. The storm that blew through on Mon didn't help.

TOS said he was in PC. Now he says he's in Feeder mgmt.
 

BrownSuit

Well-Known Member
TOS why are they running sleeper teams when they could run extra trains to the west coast?

http://fox2now.com/2014/01/09/amtrak-train-derails-near-wood-river-il/

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?id=9382980

The second one references a stuck train due to the weather and cancellations "Amtrak is scaling back service on Monday to and from Chicago because of the weather conditions. According to a statement from Amtrak, the following trains are canceled:"

Trains have to have a clear pathway just like trucks and cars, only they are a little more limited with what to do with the snow. Also, the rails (metal objects) are a little more sensitive in sub-zero temperatures than asphalt.

If anything the conditions force additional sleeper teams, hence why it would sound logical that we would bring in additional resources, however the OP seems to contradict them-self with other posts and within this thread as to what their role is within the company.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
That's terrible news about our guys on that feeder team, I hope that they'll be OK. This is just another example of profits before people. Last week with temps here in the single digits and ice and snow everywhere, they still went on with the operation and then scratched their heads when my center alone had 1 accident and 1 injury.

Scotty boy is trying his damnedest to go down as the worst CEO in the history of the company. Sure he's maximizing profits, but it's at the expense of safety and service.
You are the first poster to state this.
There have been many posters who stated that there was no reason to close down Indy and that today's UPSers are a bunch of wimps.
Everybody has an opinion.
 

barnyard

KTM rider
i understand we dont own the trains. BNSF is a pretty significant player in the rail industry.I would have thought they could dedicate more assets to the clean up.

Wow.
The railroads are running at capacity and doing what they can to expand capacity. Even if they had the equipment to run an extra, there is no track capacity for it. Especially shooters that UPS needs.

Right now, oil is clogging the rails. I live on a BNSF mainline that has seen oil become the dominant train (used to be coal and intermodal). There is so much oil on the rails that Amtrak has not been able to run an on time Empire Builder in months, with no change in sight.
 

250s

Member
I just got home from CACH Illinois where we had to run to grab a ton of trailers that were already failed by the giant hub. UPS is currently flying out managers, supervisors and any other management personnel with a Class A license to move trailers around Chicago.

What a mess, the month after a disastrous peak and UPS is still failing millions of packages.

Weather was horrible in Chicago when we arrived in our tractors. I would never live there, both the Bedford Park Hub and Cach facilities are huge and amazing to visit.

UPS is extremely busy and maybe now that they are consistently failing the operation, they will make the investments into infrastructure that is necessary to properly run this business once again.

Maybe those cuts to the bone are finally exposing the weakness of the company?

Who knows, all I know, is that I spent 5 days on the road being diverted from state to state all the way home.

We got to see Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri,Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and back home to California!

We lost a sleeper team in the rockies when the ICC forced us all to continue driving in the rockies ( glenwood springs) in a major snowstorm with near zero visibility. The team jacknifed at marker 128 tunnel before vail in heavy snow and ice without chains.

The tractor was a total loss, and the trailers damaged (while full) were towed all the way down to Denver. Both drivers had to be airlifted off the mountain. This crashed happened at 9pm in the pitch black causing a three hour delay for the rest of our teams making our way to Cach.

The trailers we picked up in Cach, had an expected arrival date of 1/8/14 to grande vista hub in Vernon California and we hooked them up on 1/9/14 and brought them home today saturday 1/11/14.

Time for this company to see the err's of its ways before the water begins circling the drain.

TOS.
I also made that trip last week, been a sleeper team driver for 14 years. There is no way CMG can force you to drive in unsafe conditions! If you feel it's unsafe, you can shut it down! I will tell you in those weather conditions, I was passed by at least 8 or 9 teams. In my opinion, they were driving way too fast for those conditions, I'm not saying that the team that had the accident were. It seems like a lot of new young and inexperienced drivers are running sleeper. Just my opinion.
 

The Other Side

Well-Known Troll
Troll
TOS, your OP contradicts itself. On the one hand, you comment on how horrible the weather was in Chicago, yet on the other hand you complain that we are constantly failing the operation and need to invest in our infrastructure.

UPS can't control the weather which also shut down Indy for 2 days. No amount of expanded infrastructure would have allowed Indy to operate either of those 2 days.

Locally, Watertown NY got slammed with lake-effect snow, with up to 5' in some areas. They shut down for 1 day and are still struggling to get caught up. Expanding the facility does not stop the wind from drawing moisture from Lake Erie and dumping it on to the Watertown area.

Weather happens----it is how the company responds that is important and expanding infrastructure is not an appropriate response.


So many wonderful people to respond to, so ill start with this one.

Dave, the moving of packages has ALOT more to do with infrastructure than just Weather delays. In Bedford Park hub, all the trailers were buried under tons of snow, and the yard frozen over. What UPS lacked was equiptment to clear this snow, the access ways and other key factors so our tractors could get in and out and hooked up without tremendous delays in coupling. Frozen ground means NO TRACTION. Buried trailers with 2 to 3 feet of snow on top of them makes for hazardous driving as that SNOW has to fall off on other drivers on the highways.

Bedford Park is across the street from the BNSF railyard, and if you knew anything about this operation, you would know that BNSF was rejecting trailers for several factors. Trailers that were late were being rejected and those drivers were forced to reroute to NY ( Jersey) Others were rejected because of capacity, and sleeper teams had to divert all the way to bedford and cach just to bring those back to the west coast or Arizona. Some of our teams had to divert from Cach to Texas or Arizona with loads and they started out in california.

Having the yards cleared of snow alone would prevent service failures. If it takes 2 hours to get a trailer freed up because its buried behind other trailers, and there is no equiptment other than a handful of guys with one shovel trying to do it, then you have a disaster in the making. The sleeper department does not have enough drivers or equiptment to pull off these kinds "saves" of the operation.

On our trip to Cach, one team crashed seriously in the rockies AFTER we contacted ICC and informed them of the near zero visibility conditions along with the 2 feet of snow and ice on the road. ICC instructed us to "keep on going and do the best we could". This worked all the way until this team wadded up thier tractor and set into a tunnel opening at 9pm at night.

You see dave, ICC and UPS only care about time, not about safety. While running short of teams, and attempting to do more with less, UPS prefers "RISK" over infrastructure.

If "WE" didnt have to maddog out of so cal to get back to chicago in bad weather we would have never lost this team. But thats not the end of the story. You see Dave, UPS also didnt give us GAS CARDS and we couldnt just fuel up like a normal tractor. We had to divert to HUBS across the USA just to get fuel even if it took us way off route. This wasted time and mileage along the way.

We need more tractors and drivers. We need more coodination and less B.S. from ICC.

Cach is in trouble this week and UPS wouldnt be moving tons of supervisors up there from all over the USA if it wasnt in trouble.

TOS.

Trailers were already failed sitting in the cach yard long before the snow hit on monday. As I said, the trailer I pulled out of cach was due in GV (so cal) on 1/8 and I arrived there on 1/9 at 930am. ICC atttempted to divert my tractor to Seaboard (NJ) and I refused before I arrived.

UPS so cal feeder had to send all the new feeder drivers to cach on this run and it was chocked full of breakdowns and delays.

As an example, If DENVER only had enough sleeper teams to meet the drivers coming out of chicago with loads that didnt make the rails or overflow, then the so cal drivers if delayed over the rockies ( as we were for 5 hours) would have only had to make it to denver to pick up trailers. Instead, our meet drivers from chicago had to leave Brooklyn Iowa and return to illinois with our loads. There, they had to put them someplace out of the way causing them to get buried in the yards.

A denver team could have made it to Iowa, picked up all the trailers and brought them back to the denver yard and we could have got them there. Our loads could have been taken to Bedford park by those denver teams and the distanced shortened for everyone.

I know its not the ideal plan, but there has to be an alternative when things go horribly wrong on the road and schedules destroyed because of weather or a bad crash that closes the freeway for hours.
 
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The Other Side

Well-Known Troll
Troll
I also made that trip last week, been a sleeper team driver for 14 years. There is no way CMG can force you to drive in unsafe conditions! If you feel it's unsafe, you can shut it down! I will tell you in those weather conditions, I was passed by at least 8 or 9 teams. In my opinion, they were driving way too fast for those conditions, I'm not saying that the team that had the accident were. It seems like a lot of new young and inexperienced drivers are running sleeper. Just my opinion.


I agree with you. We refused ICC instructions at VALE colorado after the crash and sat parked for 2 hours until Penske came and put chains onto our rental tractor. Turned out, we had the wrong kind of chains in the tractor and ICC still insisted we keep moving or be diverted to NJ. The team that crashed was a set of rookies that were also told to keep moving without chains. (they were not required in Glenwood springs) and mandatory in Vale.

I also agree and saw the same thing when I was down in red river going up and it started to snow and a sleeper team passed me like i was standing still. One of our teams also had three flat tires three separate times in the rockies.

If you were in Vale about midnight, you would remember seeing at least 10 sleeper teams parked there at chain up, and NONE of them capable of putting on chains. Thank God I called Penske on the way up and had them there when we arrived.

As for CMG/ICC, you know the routine, they tell you to keep going no matter what, then it takes a short argument to convince them of anything, then they start with the threats and phone calls. I agree, I dont drive when its unsafe no matter what they say.

My B drivers shift began at midnight at vale, and he was scared shirtless about having to drive down the mountain in those conditions. ICC got into a huge argument with him and in the end, we lost 2 hours because it was just too dangerous.

Yes, this run had ALL the rookies who graduated feeder in october from so cal. and that led to most of the problems.

Poor planning on UPS part for not training them earlier in 2013 and having them ready for something like this.

TOS.
 

fiddledee

Well-Known Member
What assets? It's not like leasing a rental tractor like we do. You don't run down the street to Penske and pickup a spare locomotive.
And we're not their only customer and don't give them the % of volume like we used to so we have less pull than we used to.

they could probably start with the extra equipment they run for us during peak. Above and beyond that I would agree with you
 

fiddledee

Well-Known Member
UPS has less pull because we provide less volume than we used to. When the train was 90% UPS we could get them to hold it 10-15 minutes occasionally. Now we're maybe 60%. The rail isn't going to po all the other shippers waiting on our trailers anymore.

does not have anything to do with "pull" . Railyards charge us to 2 to 3 grand a trailer depending on where its coming from and the size of the trailer. If there is money to be made I'm sure they would be more then happy to accomadate us.
 

fiddledee

Well-Known Member
You are the first poster to state this.
There have been many posters who stated that there was no reason to close down Indy and that today's UPSers are a bunch of wimps.
Everybody has an opinion.

Digging out after a shutdown is so difficult that there is some logic to trying to stay open and run anything you can with anyone that shows up.
 
they could probably start with the extra equipment they run for us during peak. Above and beyond that I would agree with you

Extra?

They run trains over a mile long and they're loaded full. There is no extra. The game is to make sure our trailers instead of someone elses are on that train.

does not have anything to do with "pull" . Railyards charge us to 2 to 3 grand a trailer depending on where its coming from and the size of the trailer. If there is money to be made I'm sure they would be more then happy to accomadate us.

It does have to do with "pull". Back years ago we could get the railyard to hold a train for us because we were the largest shipper using them. Now we do not ship as high a percentage with them and others have taken up that slack. So yes our "pull" with them is not what it was. Ask them to hold a train now and they say "Hold this". I get that info straight from management that has to deal with them.

As far as cost per trailer it used to be $750 regardless of size. Now it's over a grand which is why you see us switching to 53' trailers especially the 53' LCs as they can be double stacked to get two containers on one railcar.
Everybody pays the same. If we don't put a trailer on the train someone else will. They'll make their money with or without us.
 
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