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Pete:
The SP had a very sophisticated costing system. It was used to identify where we were making money or losing it. Across the whole SP system, we had a high cost railroad. One of the components was the situation you described where management was unable to manage. Gradually traffic migrated to other forms and the guys spotting the plants saw the plants close or the business shift to trucks. On a macro level, when inflation was rampant during the late 1970s, we kept asking for across the board rate increases from the ICC to cover increased labor, fuel and declining productivity costs. It could not last and the SP slowly lost the ability to attract enough business to stay in business on its own.
On another note, I knew Bob Thurston after he became head of sales in Houston. He was great to work with. He ran interference for me one day when we were about to have a contract negotiation with Kimberly Clark. I got word that VP Sales Bob Wynkoop was thinking of joining us without knowing anything about the situation. I called Thurston and asked for his help to divert Wynkoop away from the negotiations. He said, no problem, I’ll schedule a golf match. Problem solved.
Gene
When I first went to work for SP (in engine service), I was assigned to a yard job and was astonished that we had an hour for “coffee”, and hour for “beans”, and stopped work at least one hour before the normal off-duty time. Coming from a regular 9 to 5 job, I was astonished. Subsequently I learned from a higher level Market St. officer that management felt they were doing good if they got 4 1/2 hours of actual work out of a yard crew.
RDF
Hi Bob! Yes, astonished is an excellent word to describe my feelings as well when I discovered this practice as a very green and naive manager on the SP! It sounds like you worked 4-4.5 hours on a yard job and were paid for 8 hours. In road switcher territory where I was managing, the crews were working 4-6 hours and getting paid for 12 hours! Then, if you added in the fact that most of the road switcher locomotive engineers were working in “merged territory” (former Pacific Electric) and off assignment, they were making 24 hours of pay for only working 4-6 hours! The merged territory agreement was another “bank account” for the former Pacific Electric crews. They had it down to a science, one would lay off a regular job and then all the others would end up working off assignment. They were making over $100,000 in 1975!
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