Re: (erielack) Water bottles...

[secbyte_@_ptd.net]

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.

Paul Brezicki wrote:
> Paul, was it owned by someone else during the 1970's? Neither Drew nor 
> PVO Int'l appears in my list of top 100 EL customers in 1973-1974. 
> International multifoods, perhaps? (#17 in 1974). It was an important EL 
> customer but was not in the top ten, which was comprised of UPS, GM, 
> Ford and steel cos. for the most part.
> 
> Your point about the attrition among EL's top customers is well taken, 
> however. Some people have voiced the opinion that if only EL had not 
> been washed into bankruptcy by Agnes, it might have survived 
> independently outside of Conrail. If it managed to get past the grinding 
> 1974-75 recession, it would have succumbed within 10 years after much of 
> its traffic base disappeared, not to mention the effect of dereg on its 
> hilly, long-way-around route structure.
> 
> Paul B
> 
> "Water bottle" is a cutesy term for wastewater haulage. The Drew
> Chemical Company (later PVO International) of Boonton, NJ (and a four
> block walk from where I grew up) was one of the nation's largest
> processors of vegetable oils, and was EL's 8th largest customer.
> 
> Speaking of Drew and it being EL's 8th largest customer - it's another
> example of why, if EL didn't go into CR, it would have had a big
> struggle to survive on local business. After the Ohio steel mills dried
> up, then the Solvay business withered away, you had Drew/PVO - and it
> shut down in the early 80s. Today, that location is a Wal-Mart
> (surprised?). Effectively, within 10-15 years, almost all of EL's top 10
> non-intermodal customers disappeared. Not a good thing!
> 
> - Paul
> 
> 
> 
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- -- 
Warren: George, Are you coming over for poker tonight?
George: No! The last time we played you used tarot cards!
Warren: So what are you complaining about you still won.
George: I got a full house and four people died!



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