So many torn out sidings Raritan River RR why?

It might be worth noting that sometimes companies, when issuing press releases about sensitive topics such as facility closures, tend to lay the blame upon the easy whipping boys of labor, tax, and environmental laws, none of which tend to get the full-throated defense each deserves and are easy boogeymen, rather than telling sometimes very hard truths about the true reasons behind their relocation.

That isn't to say that some companies don't move due to those reasons but, often times, the reasons are much more complex and, occasionally, more sordid. It costs a TON of money to relocate, rehire, retrain et cetera. It is a serious commitment that few companies undertake without serious thought and more than one or two, rather simplistic and rather tired and clichéd, major contributing factors.

Does anyone honestly believe that a company would say, "We are moving so we can afford to buy back more shares" when they could simply lay the blame for lost jobs on something easy like taxes, those evil and greedy unions, or those damned environmentalists and their regulations?

Conrail and CSAO (and more than one shortline I can think of) play their own parts in driving away business, but it is mainly because, in Jersey as well as all of the older industrialized states, there is an overwhelming amount of industrial property that simply does not fit in with today's management models (like "5S" and others) and modern logistics trends. rr503 pretty much hit the nail on the head.

SemperFidelis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:58 am It might be worth noting that sometimes companies, when issuing press releases about sensitive topics such as facility closures, tend to lay the blame upon the easy whipping boys of labor, tax, and environmental laws, none of which tend to get the full-throated defense each deserves and are easy boogeymen, rather than telling sometimes very hard truths about the true reasons behind their relocation.

In a state like NJ, it's most probable that companies move due to regulations, taxes, etc. Property taxes in NJ are insane. You think it's bad for regular homeowners, think what it is like for commercial businesses with acres of property and multi-million-dollar facilities. I wouldn't be surprised if some of their property taxes cost more than the labor.

SemperFidelis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:58 am That isn't to say that some companies don't move due to those reasons but, often times, the reasons are much more complex and, occasionally, more sordid. It costs a TON of money to relocate, rehire, retrain et cetera. It is a serious commitment that few companies undertake without serious thought and more than one or two, rather simplistic and rather tired and clichéd, major contributing factors.

All businesses have to consider cost-risk-benefit. It may be expensive to move out of state, build a new facility, and re-train people, but some businesses might be more willing to spend a lot of money short-term in order to save a lot of money long-term, which can be done by moving out of NJ.

SemperFidelis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:58 am Conrail and CSAO (and more than one shortline I can think of) play their own parts in driving away business, but it is mainly because, in Jersey as well as all of the older industrialized states, there is an overwhelming amount of industrial property that simply does not fit in with today's management models (like "5S" and others) and modern logistics trends. rr503 pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Agreed. NJ is very dense, and as a result, open land is pretty hard to come by and is very expensive, and if there is any, it takes a long, long, long time for some of the plans to go through, due to how strict the NJDEP is, for better or worse. Adding on top of that, NJ town councils wield some pretty significant power when it comes to land development (for better or worse), and many of those town councils are composed of local citizens who are vehemently opposed to industrial land development in their towns. In Howell, this is the case - tons of empty and open land, but the local citizens want nothing to do with warehouse after warehouse coming into town. And if they get in, be prepared for some steep property taxes.

So what happens when a company in North Jersey wants to expand? Can't really buy anymore land in most parts of North Jersey, since it's either ludicrously expensive, not big enough, already occupied, or some combination of the two. So, you look for less developed areas, but the local towns are hostile to it and you have some steep property taxes and development regulations ahead of you if you get approved.

Better to just go across the border into PA where things are a tad bit cheaper, much more land to deal with, and much faster to get things done. And you're still within a reasonable range of the NYC metropolitan area.

Agreed on pretty much everything JohnFromJersey said. Environmental laws helped to shut down a plant I worked at many moons ago. We're not all that far apart in our assessment of the situation. I just try to point out divergent views on most issues that matter to me so the conversations aren't in appearance or actuality simple and one-sided.

carajul wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 10:22 pm Just cruising the 1987 aerials. Just east of Milltown/Ryders Ln all the warehouses had spurs and they had lots of covered hoppers spotted on their sidings. Today those spurs are either ripped out or have trees growing thru them. Why did CR drop all those customers? Today the line is kept all the way out to Milltown just for Silverline Windows. This doesn't make sense. How could CR just let all those customers go? It's very close to Browns Yard. I bet a short line would drum up some business.

Guess what...Its that way all over north and central jersey,
In 1970, there were 37 active sidings on the EL northern branch. Now there are 4 or less. There were close to 100 active sidings on the NJNY. There are 4 left.

There used to be local freights working the Caldwell, Orange, upper greenwood lake, and Newark branches.
Thats all 100% gone now.

What a difference 50 years makes. Also didn't help that the federal and state governments make a big push for "free" highways.

Those highways aren't free, but it is cheaper for a trucking company to use the highways than it is for a rail company to get new RoW, lay down some tracks, etc.

Also the housing market and corruption in NJ.

When ppl...starting maybe 40 years ago...discovered that the cost of land and housing was much cheaper in NJ than in Westchester and Long Island....Ppl started making the factory owners large offers for their land....and with the factories becoming outdated with tech, it became financially advantageous to move out of NJ can expand another factory, or build a new one somewhere else.

Also high taxes in NJ, politicians illegally pushing companies to move out, as they had their fingers in real estate and could line their own pockets.....and during Reagan and Clinton administrations. virtually all "buy your competition" mergers were approved. Many small company owners were offered buyouts that they couldnt refuse.

And the Ppl pulling in the money from all this were building McMansions..especially in Bergen and Monmouth counties

Welcome to America. Its all about the Benjamins.

It's all 'bout the Bennies everywhere, not just in our great nation. Even our communist friends want good jobs and big houses now.

One other thing I'll add here rel declining local carload volumes: in many cases, NJ stores/warehouses/factories still use or handle goods that have touched carload rail somewhere along their journey, but are received and trucked remotely. Corollary to the interest in inventory control among shippers has been the rapid growth of distribution system architectures that stress frequency of shipment. So, rather than holding goods for weeks to build up enough volume to full a carload in lane x, you do one of two things:

- Ship by truck or LTL or even air. These are more expensive in transpo cost terms, but if they mean you can get away with less inventory and less warehouse space, you might come out ahead.
- Centralize distribution or manufacturing functions for a region in larger facilities to increase lane densities in your distribution network.

Companies these days do both. So you get more trucks, more intermodal loads, and carload volumes in the North Jersey network which move in larger cuts to a smaller number of customers than would have been the case previously, or end up in facilities to NJ's west. All of these add up to a less visible carload footprint on the landscape, as fewer, larger spurs (or truck docks) replace many smaller ones. Woodhaven Lumber concentrating their rail deliveries at Lakewood and then distributing by truck to satellite yards (which are freed from the need to be near rail) is an example I know ~everyone in this thread is familiar with. But there are countless others -- think of Home Depot's facility in Edison, Coca Cola's huge plant in Allentown, Nestle's DC out there, etc. Those are all rail-served facilities that handle tons of freight that ends up in NNJ/NYC. The short-haul trucks that link those to sub-regional warehouses and retailers often are (indirect) replacements of rail trips.

The scale and cost economies you get through that kind of centralization are quite real, it should be noted. Having low distribution costs is one of the reasons these big retailers and national corps have had such success buying up or pushing out smaller local firms -- esp in a world of negotiated transpo contracts and atrophied cooperative shippers' associations and forwarders. One extreme example you see is, of course, the grain trade, where the creation of unit train rates became a means for large agribusiness corps to force their way into new parts of the grain marketing system, bc smaller elevators/coops/mills had neither the capital nor scale to build shuttle loaders or mills capable of absorbing that much grain at once.

Also, on this point of plant closure reasons. Obviously there's a ton of variation in what causes companies to move, and taxes are often salient. But it's worth noting that the region whose industrialization is most often described as having been a function of pro-business policy (the South) really won out for other reasons -- those being anti-labor state laws, disproportionate benefit from federal infrastructure and military spending in the postwar years, changing distribution strategies, and simply better geography. In a world where companies can play states/localities off of each other for better tax incentives, as Semper Fi points out, it makes a ton of sense for official comms (and those of the business think tank/commentary universe) to emphasize taxes bc it gives companies more leverage. But even a great tax deal generally can't override geographic/transport/regulatory forces. Just look at the whole Amazon HQ2 thing.

I was just speaking with my family about low inventory management and how it is one of the largest contributing factors in the so-called "driver shortage" as that term pertains to CDL operators. Rails are simply not set up for this sort of business outside of various intermodal lanes.

Even in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, taxes are up and labor costs are skyrocketing. Whoever made the relevant point about massive warehouses simply being unworkable in NJ (for a variety of reasons) was very correct. But, that same dynamic even affects the older cities and towns of my adopted homeland. There's simply no room for a million square feet in "the city" so the warehouse ends up in '"the township" of said city.

Edit: And everyone then blames "the city"'s taxes for why they have to drive to "the township" in order to access the new jobs.

The south, which prides itself on artificially low taxes, is the unabashed recipient of all forms of federal largesse and is, indeed, blessed with geography and environment. I mentioned in conversation last night that companies would be kind of stupid to pay to heat a million square feet for six months of brutal winter up here when they can locate somewhere more moderate in climate. Ever wonder why southern state's highways have so few potholes? It doesn't freeze and thaw a thousand times a week down there.

Thank you for pointing out the anti-labor laws and sentiments in the south. I didn't want to start that debate myself.

Anti-labor?... Think of them instead as being pro-choice, as in the choice whether or not to belong to a union. Freedom of association is a basic right, and the freedom to not associate with a union as a term of employment is a simple extension of that. Unless you live in a state where the unions and politicians are joined at the hip...

Roads down south do freeze, and they stay in good shape because they don't use salt or chemicals on the ice, and dont chip the surface by using snowplows.... The flipside is that things can shut down for a couple days at a time because the locals are terrified of driving on ice.

Many highway depatments still use sand, which is far easier on pavement and vegetation, and reusable since you can vacuum it from the drainage catch basins.

Theres no question it's easier to build new vs remediation of an older building for hazmats in the soil, asbestos, or code compliance.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

Objectively speaking, some laws are "pro-choice" (though it is so tedious when people try to use simple rhetorical tricks and political devices in academic discussions) about labor but many are downright anti-labor. I don't want to get into that debate here because the moderators probably hate that we're straying from railroading, but I am pushing for new topics about unionization and labor that won't bore people who are here to talk about trains with our, obviously impassioned, viewpoints. I'll be more than happy to debate it there if/when such topics are opened.

I'll apologize for my own remarks which strayed from the subject.

The 53' domestic container is the box car of today. Places getting shipments "by rail", just not by rail on the last leg of the journey.

And this is why we have a CDL driver shortage. Good point.

Companies like NS only exacerbate the situation by terminating containers bound for metro NY or NJ in outlying terminals like Bethlehem citing (imagine this) labor costs in Jersey and congestion on the old LV main.

SemperFidelis wrote:And this is why we have a CDL driver shortage. Good point.

Companies like NS only exacerbate the situation by terminating containers bound for metro NY or NJ in outlying terminals like Bethlehem citing (imagine this) labor costs in Jersey and congestion on the old LV main.

Very rarely is there even congestion there anymore at least between Phillipsburg and Newark. PSR means way less trains now than 6-7 years ago. Even so I don’t see that as an excuse for dropping the containers in Bethlehem despite being billed for Croxton or Port Newark or E-Rail.

Most customers, except the most environmentally conscious ones, won't care how the container gets to the door, just so long as it does. If I'm being billed X dollars for a load of widgets from a factory in Anytown, USA to my company's warehouse in Popperville, USA (I hope at least one person gets that fictional geographic reference), it doesn't really matter to me if the container said widgets are on ever touches a train, even if I'm being billed by an intermodal freight company or NS or CSX or whomever.

I recall, having worked briefly for Roadrailer/Triple Crown, hundreds of loads that never touched a Roadrailer terminal, much less a train. Intermodal means any mode available. Sometimes that's rail/truck, sometimes it's straight truck.

The vast majority of intermodal moves, it would be worth noting, are billed door to door as one straight bill and whoever sells the transportation of the load of widgets is responsible simply for getting it there, unless a widget manufacturing company prefers to handle the trucking on one or both ends. In those cases, the railroad simply moves the container of widgets from terminal A to terminal B, and, even then, there is an off handed chance that it might end up moving on a truck if NS or whomever finds a carrier willing to move the container of widgets at a lower rate than they themselves could.

That there is no longer congestion just goes to show how much a factor either true labor costs or actual anti-labor sentiment factors into moves to/from metro NY/Nj.