Covid made it worse but it started right after Harrison took over and started cutting jobs.
Talking to a government committee, after the committee received staggering complaints from the ports and businesses, it went something like: my obligation is to my shareholders, not my customers.
The trains were derailing. Breaking down. No crews. Friends that weren’t fired said that CSX had trains sitting on tracks, blocking crossings for days.
(And Harrison’s protégés are still running things.
I mostly deal with sawmills out west or in Canada.
That means the origin railroad is BNSF, UP, CN or CPRS.
CSXT, KCS, NS are all railroads east of the Mississippi.
We deal with them, but the lumber/OSB typically does not originate from there.
The problems we experienced were primarily with the origin rail carriers not supplying empty rail cars to the sawmills.
The excuse was they had mothballed many of the flatcars at the beginning of covid and took them out of service. Then they did not have enough crews(people) to run the trains.
So, they always give priority to commodities like coal, crude oil, grains, necessities, etc.
Lumber is not that important to the railroads. They make more money running at train from the coal mine in WY to the port of Tacoma nonstop made up of all coal hopper cars.
With lumber they pick up five cars from one mill, two from another and one from a third. It like making the milk run.