I am one of the furloughed employees from the Bailey Yard. The predicament that I am in is that 2 years ago I bought a house in North Platte and I am stuck with it now. Looking at real estate/rental data, prices are dropping like crazy. The question is to try to ride this out or just sell below what I paid for the house and move back to Denver?
15 replies (most recent on top)
check with your local section 8 place it on section 8 55 plus meaning tenant must be 55 or older section 8 pays me 2397 a month in texas my mtg is 1493...
Find a new job back in Denver and list your North Platte house on AirBnb. I'm sure you'd have lots of takers.
Im sorry, you lost me at "i hired on the railroad and bought a house in north platte"
Do what everyone else does and let the bank have it. Live there for free until they evict you.
Black Rock, large shareholders, the board, and the C suite could care less about tariffs. They’re riding the wave and timing their exit. They aren’t making business decisions for the future. They’ve invested money and are waiting for the ship to list. When it does, they’ll jump off, take their winnings, and look for new opportunities to score a buck.
Don’t credit these fools with having any kind of long term plan. Tariffs...give me a break. Again, they’ve created a cash cow and are milking it dry. When the tit goes dry, they’ll be long gone.
All the babble in the meantime is CEO double talk to keep the money coming. Smoke and mirrors and they win, no matter what. As long as they keep it mainly legal, they get out unscathed.
The tariffs are causing negative disruptions to supply chains, and therefore negative disruptions to the bottom line for many companies (including UP and many UP customers). If you support tariffs and other forms of economic vandalism then that's your choice, but stop complaining about losing your jobs and houses, because executives aren't going to take food off of their tables to put it on yours.
I personally don't care about the tariffs or layoffs one way or the other because I'm not effected by either, but it is strange that so many people won't admit that the tariffs are driving business decisions at UP and elsewhere that lead to job losses.
Correct the other railroads did not decide to follow the PSR Model until 2017. Right about the time they were all handed a bunch of free money via the current Administration's tax cuts. Right now all the Class 1s are playing with government money that they didn't earn. Even if it had failed monumentally, they never would have taken a hit to their profits. Right now all the cards are in their hands. They have a bunch of free money and a lower volumes this year. Add the extensive system wide layoffs and fudging of some car load numbers and it looks rosy for the carriers. The issue the UP is going to have is that even with all these things to their advantage many stock traders have put the UP as a strong-sell or hold and have deemed the stock incredibly volatile as it swings a full 2-3 dollars/share back and forth every day.
Their money will run out eventually so the best they can hope for in the long run is to keep the FRA holding true that 2 man crews are not necessary. Eliminating the conductor position as a whole for PTC means a whole lot of Hinkle Yard human manpower throughout the entire country.
Sorry you aren’t better informed. The job losses at UP are being driven by a different business model, not tariffs. Most railroads went to this model long before the tariffs.
All of you agreement guys are acting like it's a big surprise that large corporations cut jobs when something like tariffs come along that dent their profits, and most of you support the tariffs and/or lean Republican. You can't have it both ways, and you shouldn't expect executives to take a pay cut to protect your livelihood. That's not how corporate greed works.
Note that very little of the money that UP got back after the 2017 tax cut was invested in employees. That whole "trickle down" idea doesn't seem to be panning out either.
My humble counsel would be to sell at a loss, and do what is right by your family, then please go back to Denver. You will no be able to ride it out here in NP. It's a dead end town that is going to get a lot dead(er). Please don't get to where you will be totally unable to recover and be living under some bridge around here. UP doesn't give a d*man about your family or anyone else's. As mentioned, do your homework and see how UP is going to go down with the ship, and take employees with it, including you and your family. And by the way the Captain isn't going down with the UP ship.
I say find the new job you move there, then bring family and rent the house out. The rental market is holding up very well with rents increasing. You get to keep the house while covering the monthly nut and build your retirement profile.
I ran into the same predicament at another location and I chose to take the loss instead of trying to ride out the housing market. It wasn't an easy decision and 5 years later the housing market still hasn't came back. I'm glad I made the decision but it still hurt to take the huge loss.
If you pay attention to future trends for class1 roads their long term plan it to eliminate as many people as possible. I would advise you to do what is best for you and your family. It’s a big world out there. I would advise people to start checking out Progressive railroading, railway age, and railroad news sites. I’m sure you will get a good idea of the future for most of us employees. Good luck.
I don't think riding it out is a viable option. Getting a callback seems unlikely.
UP is like that hot girl. You keep going back for more then wake up and years later with three kids and a dumpy wife and say WTF and you can’t afford to leave her. I say RUN!!!!!!!!’