You asked what the perfect world would be. When we order cars at our sawmills, sometimes we're on one shift, sometimes two. We order six cars a day. If they don't bring us six cars, we have four loaders sitting there doing nothing. They'll bring them after they go home at night. They have to be more consistent. I've heard they're “out of hours” a million times this winter. If they're out of hours, hire more people so we can get five cars a day.
They put on a special switch train in Hornepayne just to serve our mills. A main line would drop off empties there, and that one train would look after Longlac and Nakina. They go to Longlac in the morning, draw some cars, then by the time they get to Nakina, they're out of hours--no cars for Nakina. Then it keeps building up, and we just can't run that way.
Then on Friday evening, when the four o'clock shift's over and everybody's going home for the weekend, the railway decides to drop off 30 cars. To satisfy our customers, we have to pay overtime, work all weekend. Then when we come in Monday morning to start work, there are no cars for regular work.
It has to be more consistent. I don't know how they'd do it, but I would think if they had more personnel...because I've always heard, as the only excuse for not getting service, “out of hours”.
Thank you.