Rail Strike Anxiety Stalls Apple Harvest
Threatened railroad walkouts trigger market volatility and costly diversions for White Bluffs fruit growers.
The story, cleaned up
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The threatened railroad strike has demoralized the fruit market in this valley as well as other places. The growers received 60 cents net for one car that went out and 55 cents for the other that followed. Since that time the stuff has been going out under consignment, the buyers refusing to guarantee a price for fear of a glut of the nearby markets. The railroad announced Tuesday that they would refuse to accept any shipment that would not reach its destination before 7 a.m. Monday, the date set for the strike. This caused everything to be diverted to Seattle and other nearby points. Two cars went out of White Bluffs by freight Thursday and about half a car by express. Friday, three cars went out by freight and about half a car by express. In this shipment was a car of Jonathan apples shipped by the Bleakley Fruit company. Mr. Bleakley said that the threatened strike caused him to change the destination of the car from St. Paul to Seattle, with a resultant loss, he figures, of about $300. The railroad will accept shipments up to and including Sunday morning, which will about clean up the soft fruit in this district.
“The threatened railroad strike has demoralized the fruit market in this valley as well as other places.”
Logistical bottlenecks and supply chain jitters have remained a consistent headache for the Columbia Basin’s agricultural sector for over a century. What was once a rail-strike fear is now often a labor or freight capacity shortage, but the vulnerability of the region’s perishable crops to external disruption remains a constant.
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