Pros

you get to travel, you have to travel. You can spend hours on an airplane without any compensation.

Cons

everything. There are so many rules that you can't do your job without breaking them.Its set up that way so if anything happens to you it's your fault. They expect you to drive a commercial vehicle beyond the hours allowed by the D.O.T. so your forced into breaking the law. You have to provide your own tools which the company says they'll replace if lost or broken but they never do. There is so much redundant paperwork that you'll think you hired on as a secretary.You work long hours 16 hours or more somedays. The pay is not as good as the track workers so even though you may have gone to school and have provided thousands of dollars worth of tools laborers make more than you. If you hire on as a mechanic there is no place else to go,your considered a seperate craft so the only options for a promotion is a mechanics supervisor which is a crap job and ther is no way to transfer to a diferent department unless you quit and get rehired as something else,loosing you seniority of course.They never have any money for parts but if something is broken your expected to cobble it together with some jackass breathing down your neck asking "how much longer?" the equipment is junk, filty greasy leaky junk and they never wash it so your going to get exposed to a lot of oils and toxic crap. If you like living on fastfood and sleep deprivation this is the job for you.

Advice to Senior Management

pay your employees beter we leave or families behind and sacrifice a lot for you company. Make my job easier by eliminating redundant paperwork,for godsake if somebodey is on an airplane for five hours traveling to the jobsite pay them, it's not like i'm going on vacation. If you crap on your employees long enough,pretty soon you'll have crappy employees.