Warren Buffet a Latocer?

[mtlouie]

They've done a great PR campaign on Mr. Buffet, no doubt about it.

[Ming]

Warren Buffet is heavily invested in railroad and he wants to push the gov't into investing in the red eye rail system and is using the economic and environmental scares to do it.   My town is hoping for the red eye to come through with a lot of stimulus money.

My opinion - it should have been done a long time ago.  That system is now outdated and we can do so much better environmental wise. 

I do think Warren Buffet has seen his day and his investing in railroad was a big mistake. 

[skepticus]

There's no way in hell we can keep shipping single (or double) trailers worth of shit across country in separate trucks, when you can pile them all on a huge train and do the same far more fuel-efficiently.   Sure, you'll have to truck them to their destination locally by truck, but having thousands of trucks crossing the country is hugely inefficient.

I completely agree.  The sad thing is that shipping product by rail is way more efficient fuel wise but terribly inconvenient time wise (as it stands right now).  I ship product every day in my job, and I only use rail when timeliness is not an issue at all.  A good example was around this time last year I had 240,000 lbs of product to ship from North Carolina to Oregon.  I had four weeks before the plant actually needed the product, so I loaded half of it onto a rail car (the other half I didn't need for at least a couple months).  Well, three weeks later the car hasn't showed up yet and I'm starting to get kind of nervous, so I call around to get an ETA (a Herculean task in the first place to figure out who to even contact - I think it took a day or two just to get a hold of the right person) and it's still in Kansas or some shit.  Our production schedule was locked in place and I had to have the product here, so I ended up shipping the other half of what I ordered by truck, which got here in four or five days (just in the nick of time, too).  That was a particularly bad experience, but I've seldom shipped anything by rail without issues of some sort or it taking ridiculously long for product to show up. 

[FullRefusal]

He's not even close to what we are. He's a capitalist, a member of the elite and doesn't think about things in even the most obscurely similar fashion. Don't be mistaken.

[cz]

There's no way in hell we can keep shipping single (or double) trailers worth of shit across country in separate trucks, when you can pile them all on a huge train and do the same far more fuel-efficiently.   Sure, you'll have to truck them to their destination locally by truck, but having thousands of trucks crossing the country is hugely inefficient.

I completely agree.  The sad thing is that shipping product by rail is way more efficient fuel wise but terribly inconvenient time wise (as it stands right now).  I ship product every day in my job, and I only use rail when timeliness is not an issue at all.  A good example was around this time last year I had 240,000 lbs of product to ship from North Carolina to Oregon.  I had four weeks before the plant actually needed the product, so I loaded half of it onto a rail car (the other half I didn't need for at least a couple months).  Well, three weeks later the car hasn't showed up yet and I'm starting to get kind of nervous, so I call around to get an ETA (a Herculean task in the first place to figure out who to even contact - I think it took a day or two just to get a hold of the right person) and it's still in Kansas or some shit.  Our production schedule was locked in place and I had to have the product here, so I ended up shipping the other half of what I ordered by truck, which got here in four or five days (just in the nick of time, too).  That was a particularly bad experience, but I've seldom shipped anything by rail without issues of some sort or it taking ridiculously long for product to show up. 

Heh, of course, with peak oil, "JIT" will go the way of the dodo bird.  It'll be more like "you'll be glad to get something, whenever it gets to you, rather than nothing."

[JohnLudi]

Heh, of course, with peak oil, "JIT" will go the way of the dodo bird.  It'll be more like "you'll be glad to get something, whenever it gets to you, rather than nothing."

The scary thing about that scenario is when you live, as I do, in big cities like Chicago with its incredibly dense population and realize that the system we have in place is the only one that can feed and clothe and shelter this amount of human beings.  The railway system should be resurrected, definitely, but it would never be able to service the current population unless there was a significant purposeful relocation of most of that population...even then, the numbers don't work as I see them.

[mtlouie]

Um.....maybe they're not planning on shipping plastic pumpkins......

[gin]

by definition
at most only 1% percent of the masses can be..
like buffet.. like GS.. like TPTB.. fugetaboutit

[hillwalker]

(is) Warren Buffet a Latocer?

Who TF cares?

Sorry. But I really couldn't care what Buffet is or isn't.

The fact that he still is at all, , well, tell me when he isn't.
I'll dance a jig.

[cz]

Heh, of course, with peak oil, "JIT" will go the way of the dodo bird.  It'll be more like "you'll be glad to get something, whenever it gets to you, rather than nothing."

The scary thing about that scenario is when you live, as I do, in big cities like Chicago with its incredibly dense population and realize that the system we have in place is the only one that can feed and clothe and shelter this amount of human beings.  The railway system should be resurrected, definitely, but it would never be able to service the current population unless there was a significant purposeful relocation of most of that population...even then, the numbers don't work as I see them.

Well, I always figured the cities would be the first to die-off.  I mean, look at Katrina, a city takes an enormous amount of "input" from outside to sustain itself.  Not like a "rooftop garden" on a 10-story building will come anywhere *close* to feeding the people in that building, much less anyone else, and even in more residential areas the lot sizes are small.  If the "system" truly breaks down, even for those with "preps" a city will be more dangerous (more hungry people per sq.mi. looking for anything they can get).

Then again, more rural area's means more distance to "supplies"... the *closest* grocery store to me (if they even had anything) is 5mi... if fuel was rationed (at best) and unavailable to the masses (in favor of bulk transportation) - I'd be walking 5mi each way to fill up a backpack of food (with the associated "security" issues associated with that walk).  Of course, then again, I'm like 1/2mi from a train station (commuter line mainly, but they do bring a freight train up several times a year).

[EWHM]

Buffet has been building up his stakes in the railroad industry for some years now.  His explanation has been that rail (cargo, not passenger) becomes increasingly more and more valuable as the price of diesel (what the competition, trucking requires at reasonable prices to be economically viable) increases.  Being as he is usually a pretty long term investor of the value variety, it is reasonable to assume that he believes that the price of diesel will continue to escalate, making his investment worth more.  It would seem to follow that he believes at very least in political peak oil at very minimum, and more likely in geological peak oil.

[risquebznss]

Much of Buffet's success has been having deep enough pockets to take a longer term position.  He does some things that don't make sense in the present but do make sense over a period of time.

[msegk]

Burlington was one of the last stocks I acquired after becoming a LATOCer, based on discussion right in this very forum.  Shortly after, Buffet increased his stake a bit.

[NYALB]

This is a fantastic peak oil play.  Buffet knows what he is doing. 

[jtollison78]

Much of Buffet's success has been having deep enough pockets to take a longer term position.  He does some things that don't make sense in the present but do make sense over a period of time.

Most of his success has been having enough good sense to take a long term view and stick with it which most people seem entirely incapable of.  He's a brilliant guy and I'm guessing not one to overlook doom, just not one to get swept away with it either. That's not to say I'm a big fan of his political positions.