| If you have any ideas on what can be done to improve the driver’s experience at Chicago ramps, let us know: |
| It always seems there are not enough equipment on site at the different ramps. When there is enough equipment, it seems to always be bad order equipment. You should also do a survey on the EMHU and UMXU Vans also, I would love to see. |
| faster repairs when needed |
| be strick on chassi damages so drivers can make sure they dont pull bad order chassi, also more mechanics so drivers are not stuck at rails for 2-3hrs waiting for a repair. |
| Need more good order chassis available and better maintenance on these chassis. |
| The gate system at the CN sucks.. No bobtail lane, and even though they changed the gates/traffic flow, the train still blocks the gate, the engineer that designed this ramp should be shot in the head. Lift lines at the NS, if they are working the train, you just became the last priority. It does not seem that there is no proactive chassis repairs, many times it seems that the chassi are not repairded until you get to the road ability lanes to check out. Sounds funny, but one of the biggest gripes is portapotty/washroom facilties.. After spending hours in a terminal many places don't even have facilities. |
| If all the employees at the ramp worked like they wanted to be helpful that would be wonderful. They ususally treat the drivers like they are the bottom of the barrel |
| RAIL BILLING TO BE ACCEPTED QUICKER AT THE RAIL YARDS IN ORDER FOR DRIVERS TO ENTER THE YARDS IN A TIMELY MATTER, HAVING UPDATED WEBSITES SHOWING CONTACTS PER RAIL/DEPOT YARDS. |
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| More lifts/lift operators at all NS locations & CN Harvey; More readily available mechanics; ACTUAL help at driver's assist; More easily reachable assistance from dispatchers end when we have to call rail yards/depots; No denying of drivers when they need equipment fixed. |
| Hire more people to do the repairs and buy new tires for all the chassis. 95 % of the complains from our drivers are tires repairs on the road. |
| faster response if there is a problem that needs an operator's help |
| for railroads to not shut down chassis lift operations for train cuts, terminal services need to staff more. Our mutual customers lose with driver delays. |
| BNSF Elwood spotters dragging chassis and ruining tires. Global 4 needs more mechanics to fix bad-order chassis. CN Harvey is terrible if a driver has to wait for a lift. I understand the trains need to be processed but rail terminals need to continue to improve in the area of processing drivers and recognizing the important and vital role outside trucks play in their operation. |
| The tires are horrible on intermodal chassis! I suggest the chassis lines switch to radial tires. Which they have started with the 53' domestic chassis. Also, spotters at the rail yards need to be monitored. A lot of the damage to chassis occur within the railyards. I have been tempted to video tape their actions. They will drag the chassis up and down the tracks! |
| Equipment needs to be pre-tripped prior to arrival, when we arrive at the CY Yards they just hand our drivers work orders to take these full set-ups right to the repair shop, this should not happen. Whomever's responsibility it is to check these units need to be more accountable. |
| this is really a no brainer question for anyone in intermodal. it is obvious the intermodal industry pushes the responsibility to the truckers, company and driver, to be the equipment inspector and to be the one who has to not only do the reporting but has to be the one forcing the repair. making truck drivers have to run through mechanic lines before issuing flip tickets and having mechanics dispute chassis conditions trying to force drivers to take less than desirable equipment on the road is just wrong. everyone speaks so highly of "safety" yet very little is done at the point of origin to promote safety and it is left to the driver and the trucking company to prevent road issues and waste time and $$ doing so. and of course most of the time end up getting stuck with the cost of equipment issues on the road. the fact that chassis still use 10.00/20 and 11/22.5 bias tires should be a crime. |
| The ramp employee's treat the drivers poorly. The drivers are there to pickup a good container on a good chassis. The ready lanes delay drivers or make them get a lift after being in line for an hour. The box is mounted backwards. WHY? Pin lock is missing why mount the box? Global 2 is the worst for our drivers. There mechanics don't want to anything in a timely fashion. |
| There could be an entire book written on this topic. It starts with repairs and safety all the way to efficiency of lines. Tires are literally eating our terminal alive. |
| Have real people that actually care about helping. Have real people that are willing to repair equipment with out asking for $20.00 from the driver. Seprate bad order equipment Have equipemnt on site that is road worthy. Treat drivers like humans as opposed to treating them like dogs. |
| The ramp staff could be a little more helpful to toward the drivers & could show a little more patience with them. |
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| Yard mechanics need more supervision and training. It seems if u know how to use a torch and how to weld they call u a chassis mechanic. show me one rail chassis repair contractor that has any kind of training and safety program. |
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| All parties should work together on the issues - delays, equipment, repairs etc. Focus groups should be put together to work through issues - too much finger pointing when in fact we all could improve if we worked together. |
| Overall, my drivers biggest complaint about the ramps is the attitude of the personnel when they are being approached for assistance. It causes great delays in every aspect of my field of work. |
| There needs to be more mechanic/bays at these ramps. Our drivers experience, sometimes hours of delays waiting on repairs of chassis. COCP good order availability is limited, at best, specifically at BN Elwood/CN Harvey. FHWA expirations are a major issue as well......when drivers are arriving at the rail and containers are already mounted on expired chassis, this creates even longer waiting times. |
| they neeed 24 hr service the cn harvey rail shop crew go home at 5:00 p.m. there is no one to fix the chassis or in the morning they open at 6;00 the big problem is tire blow out they need to go tubless. |
| have better ROAD READY equipment available, which I know will probably be impossible, the people that have contact with the drivers should have to take classes on how to treat your fellow man.. and treat others as you would like them to treat you! |
| I think the ramp personnel treat the drivers as people who get in their way. Many intermodal drivers are paid on percentage and to be ignored by the spotters and lift operators casuses problems. All the drivewrs want to do is get their container and getr out. We think it is fair to wait 30 minutes for a lift but 1+ hour waits are unfair. Dedicated lift for the trucks even if it is for specific hours during the day and night would help eliminate some of the problems. |
| First and foremost lets have employees work for their hourly wage. With regards to mounted/grounded units the BNSF LPC Elwood is the worst. Would be perfectly ok with mounted units if their spotters did their jobs and mounted the units correctly and/or not on faulty equipment causing the trucker to have to waste his time correcting their mistakes. Drivers do not get paid to sit in the rail unlike rail employees. The NS, CN, and CP should just close their doors. 9 times out of 10 their employees are just useless. Truckers are reprimaned for their behavior in the rail - rail employees have no consequences when they are rude and disrespectful to the truckers. A truckers job is hard enough we do not need the rail, SSL's, and chassis pools to heap more onto us. Rail, SSL, and chassis pool employees work each day and get paid. When our time is wasted because of one of these entities we do not get paid. |
| lift of/on loads quicker.... drivers are waiting way to long to get loads lifted on/off especially at NS LANDERS AND CN HARVEY |
| Drivers time is valuable- issues on chassis should be determined prior to drivers coming into ramps . Our drivers are not mechanincs and do not have the time to wait in Roadability lanes. We don't nor do our drivers get paid to fix issues on equipment we don't own. Compare it to leasing a car. While we have a responsibility to make sure equipment is in good working order prior to outgating, it seems some IEP's are only relying on our drivers to find the BAD eqpt and then it becomes our issue to get it fixed. The law was NOT written this way to involve drivers to fix broken non road worthy eqpt. |
| They need to keep up with there equipment and the staff there needs to be more attentive to the drivers |
| We need to get all the truckers together it is getting real bad. something has to be done or we willl all perish. |
| THE FLIPS NEED TO BE FASTER. SOME PERSONNEL NEED ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENTS TREAT DRIVERS CRAPPY. SPOTTERS NEED TO PULL LESS JUNK TO GET MOUNTED. LOGISTICS PARK NEEDS MORE ROADS THAT ALLOW GOING BETWEEN AISLES, RATHER THAN HAVING TO GO ALL THE WAY TO ONE END |
| Mount imports on good order chassis. Allow COCP chassis to be outgated without a release number, or if that can't be done, ensure the release number is good for more than just one day. Use only facilities that are 24hrs. Most of the issues with the chassis are lights and tires. The most time consuming part of this is going to the repair depot and sitting in long lines. Something that can speed this up is having mobile repair vehicles, or even spotters, with a bunch of extra lights. This will greatly cut the repair line down and wait times as about half of the issues needing repair is a simple replacement of lights. |
| Scales should be put in every ramp so drivers can make sure they are legal before they get on the street. e.g. Bn Elwood and UP G4 should have one for sure because the police sit outside all hours of the day and night....it is like shooting fish in a barrel for the police. Our customers want to know for sure that the load is overweight so they want it pulled and cat scaled. This puts our drivers license at risk every time. A scale will take two parking spaces and could be a money maker for the ramp. Cat Scale would do all the work and split the profits. Airing stations should be put at every outgate to make sure all tires are at correct psi before leaving....kind of like APL used to do(not sure if they still do)...if you have an airing receipt and you have a tire issue, they cover it....if not...driver is responsible for the tires. This is the single biggest loss to every trucking company and driver that does intermodal. These two issues should be manditory. You would be hard pressed to find a trucker that would disagree with either of them. |
| Equipment needs to be better maintained and inspected by MNR. Equipment repairs and delays eat up driver HOS. Terminal break hours / shift change hours keep drivers standing by, perhaps there could be overlaping shifts. |
| Units need mounted on good order chassis. Drivers are discovering chassis is in need of repair, so is delayed in waiting for a lift to new chassis or waiting for units to be repaired. Also, there needs to be a pool of available, good order, bare chassis at each yard |
| Hire employees that really care about there jobs. Also remove the unions from the equation. |
| Yard Center (Dolton, IL) has gone from the best yard in Illinois to rock bottom worst of them all. They need to bring back the repair company they had a few years back. Pro Trailer does really bad work and take way too long to get things reparied. It used to run a lot smoother when they would repair and/or flip without driver assist. Not sure why we have to punish the drivers because of bad equipment. Half of the time there is no one there to help us out and when they do finally decide to show up they do half of the work needed on these repairs and if they dont feel like doing anymore work to it then they give the driver a chassis flip ticket and send them away. I have had drivers spend 2-3 hours in line for repairs only to have to spend another 1-2 hours getting a chassis flip. |
| Ramps where we can bring our chassis is better. Chassis from leasing companies are unsafe and our drivers have to act as inspectors. They do not have ample service personnel for chassis. Again we have brought this subject at Illinois Trucking and so far nothing has happened. Do we need a fatality as before to wake people up. |
| Faster service. Drivers are up againest DOT hours of service. |
| I think service has improved, but the maintenance on the chassis has not gotten better. need the maintenance vendors to do a better job and they need to be accountable. the tear and wear ont the chassis units will not chance, so the service to the units has to be well done the first time if possible. Waitning for tires and light on the BNSF specilaly is brutall sometimes. getting tires repair or changed is another ordeal. change shifts there is no one availbe for one hour, so if you have to have a flip you must waith an hour in order to get the unit switch. |
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| Dedicated lift machine's in the lift area's, tired of hearing that WE ARE WORKING A TRAIN , what's the point if you can't get the containers out of the yard, or into the yard ..Stop the rails from mounting bad order chassis, will cut down lift times, lift lines, long lines at repair facilities ..should free up machines to deramp and ramp trains . |
| Drivers are always treated without respect. They are always ignored, yelled at, sometimes swear at. Rail yards such as NS, and CN they take several hours lifting on the containers. Crane operators sometimes are sitting in the cranes not doing anything, or talking to other workers. If a driver approach them, they get yelled at and they will take twice as much to get the container lift on. NS rails are the worst at any time, they take 4 or 5 hours to lift on a container to my driver's chassis. |
| Have equipment checked out and verified that it is safe to leave the rail yards prior to the container being lifted on. It's not just lights and flats, but UNSAFE equipment that would be put out of service if there was a DOT inspection done on it. Why would the BNSF ever load a container on a chassis that cannot leave the yard? Several times this past year they mounted on an in-house chassis BOMZ I believe that cannot leave the rail. SAFETY..SAFETY..SAFETY should be the words the rails use when determining if a chassis is good enough to go out on the street. Thank you for this survey. I'm not venting, I'm talking about specific issues that the rail yards should never load a container on unsafe equipment that could kill someone. |
| BN CICERO, MISMOUNTED UNITS ARE A BIG PROBLEMS WITH FLIPS TIMES FROM 1 TO 4 HOURS. AND STILL CHARGE FOR FLIP IF YOU INGATE COCP CHASSIS EVEN WHEN THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY AVAILABLE ON THIER PROBERTY |
| All chassis providers need to use better options on their tires, while virgins are not always cost efficent they should not be recapped more than once. When at Elwood and you have tire issues with more than one or two tires the shop can not replace more than one or two. If the tires are bad then change them, dont have my guy go get the unit flipped only to have that chassis get mounted with anothe container and have some other driver run into the same issue! Norfolk and Southern Landers...needs to cut down on the time it takes to get lifted on or off. Drivers are loosing 1,2,even 3 hours in there! |
| Create a more helpful and knowledgeable staff in Driver's Assistance areas to expedite resolution for drivers' problems. Too often, drivers waste valuable time and energy at a DA window/booth for something that is an easy fix. Most times someone just doesn't bother to take the time to follow through to resolution. |
| The speed in which roadability repairs are done or flips completed MUST improve. The NS and CN ramps frequently take an unreasonable amount of time to get lifted. DCLI bills more M&R expenses, and at a higher cost, than their competitors. |
| Drivers waiting in long lines for repairs, spotters take forever. Containers pre-mounted on terrible chassis. |
| pre instection of mounted unit at the rail. |
| If the containers are going to be premounted the rail should inspect them before hand and not mount the containers on abvious bad order chassis. |
| Make sure the euip is in good order before notifing. Make sure equip on list for pulling empties are actually in good order condition, prior to making the driver look through all of them. Make sure chassis have cuirrent DOT inspections prior to green tagging them. Put lees emphasis on the drivers to make sure that the chassis providers equip is in road worthy condition. |
