Jim young, president of Union Pacific, America's biggest railway company, told analysts last week that the company was "preparing for a tough winter". The season will bring far more trouble than mere snow on the track. Inefficiencies in the industry are leaving customers in the lurch just as demand for freight shipping is at its peak. Retailers are stocking up with Christmas fare and farmers have begun packing off their harvests. But UPS, the railways' biggest customer, complains of congestion on tracks in the west, and Dow Chemical, which has big plants around a Union Pacific hub in Houston, says that delayed shipments have cost it millions of dollars. Some utilities, which want at least a month's supply of coal on hand, are down to two weeks' due to slow rail deliveries.
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