CPKC
“There is exciting progress at our new Kansas City, MO facility!” Americold reported late last month via LinkedIn (see photographs above and below). The company is building a cold storage facility as part of a strategic collaboration with CPKC to co-locate Americold warehouse facilities on the Class I’s network.
Americold and CPKC in June 2023 first reported their intent to build the Kansas City facility, which they said would bring together “cold storage and value-added-services with expedited intermodal transportation solutions connecting key U.S. Midwest and Mexico markets.” The new facility will support CPKC’s Mexico Midwest Express (MMX) service, North America’s only single-line rail service offering for refrigerated shippers between U.S. Midwest markets and Mexico. It will also enable more seamless and efficient service for MMX customers, according to Americold, an owner and/or operator of 243 temperature-controlled warehouses in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America.
“Our teams are prepping the final grades for the building slab of this 335,000 sq ft site,” according to Americold’s LinkedIn post that CPKC shared on Aug. 29. “It will feature a cross-dock design, food inspection, trailer wash, and is the ONLY storage facility with direct gated access to CPKC’s intermodal yard. This is part of our strategic collaboration with CPKC to co-locate Americold facilities on the CPKC network. We are proud to expand possibilities for our customers in the food supply chain!”
CN
“We were thrilled to welcome recently retired CN COO and railroading veteran Ed Harris back for a very special visit and surprise, as we renamed our Woodcrest Shops in Homewood, IL (where Ed’s railroading journey began!) in his honour,” CN reported in an Aug. 29 LinkedIn post. “Ed’s contributions have set a standard for excellence not only at CN but within the rail industry, and we are so proud to celebrate his legacy in this meaningful way. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks, Ed.”
Forty-plus-year railroad veteran Ed Harris retired from CN service in March.
CN in April 2022 hired Harris out of retirement as an operations consultant, and in November 2023 named him Executive Vice President and COO, succeeding Rob Reilly. Previously, he served as Executive Vice President, Operations at CSX from 2018 to 2020, and as Chief Operations Officer at Canadian Pacific (CP) from 2010 to 2012 (CP merged with Kansas City Southern in 2023 to form CPKC). He also spent three decades at Illinois Central and CN, including as Executive Vice President, Operations until 2007.
“Ed (Harris) and I have known each other for quite some time, and I have a great appreciation for his skills, the way he looks at this railroad (CN),” CN President and CEO Tracy Robinson said during an interview with Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono, which took place after she was named the magazine’s 2024 Railroader of the Year and after CN announced that Harris would be stepping down as COO and passing the throttle to Patrick Whitehead (elevated to Executive Vice-President and Chief Networking Operating Officer) and Derek Taylor (elevated to Executive Vice-President and Chief Field Operating Officer). “He knows this railroad very well and the way he thinks about the business, but also how he leads and what his values are. And that was important to me as I figured out who I could invite in to help us think through the next generation of the operations team. He did me a great favor in coming in. He knew our team very well, and he was a great thought partner on how we could structure this in a way that would make sure that we don’t take our eye off the operating ball while we’re growing. It’s important that, with this operating cadence and the level of customer service we have achieved, we don’t lose that as we turn to growth.
“We decided we would differentiate, create two very different kind of organizations. One is focused on the day-to-day execution. There’s a lot that goes on out there every day. We’re all involved in it. And that takes a lot of focus in the moment and day-to-day. Separately, we need as equal and as strong a focus on the future. Running the scheduled operating plan means a plan is made at the center of network operations to optimize the whole. And it is constantly being revised, because there’s new business coming on or the business is changing. But we need to be looking five years out and further, around what we think the business is going to look like.
“Then we need to have the track infrastructure and capacity up to standards. We need to have the locomotive fleet, we need to manage the crew base and the employee base, all of that through a longer-term lens. These are two very different pieces of work, and we can’t distract either of them from their purpose, which means that we have Derek (Chief Field Operating Officer Derek Taylor) and his organization every day out there delivering the plan, running the plan. We’ve got Pat (Chief Network Operating Officer Patrick Whitehead) and Derek and his organization every day working on the plan and looking forward to making sure that we’re set up for the future. I think that this is the right way to structure our organization as we look to maintaining our customer service levels and growing.” (For more of the interview, click here.)
Further Reading: Ed Harris: “Just Run the Trains on Time”
UP
“As we’re getting ready to flip the calendar to September, I’m optimistic about our momentum with carloadings—hitting the highest seven-day total so far this year driven by strong West Coast imports and intermodal,” UP Executive Vice President, Marketing and Sales Kenny Rocker wrote in an Aug. 29 customer letter. “We are also gearing up for grain harvest and eagerly await the crops to make their way to the elevators.”
He provided the following key operating metrics, noting that they are “all trending favorably with week-over-week improvements”:
- Freight Car Velocity: 210 miles per day.
- Train Velocity: 18.9 miles per hour.
- Terminal Dwell: 22.7 hours.
Rocker also reported that UP’s Invoice Management tool has been fully rolled out to replace the former Account on the Web (AOW) tool. “The new interface to manage and pay your invoices saves you time with faster service performance and less clicks to get to your invoices,” he told customers. “For any user still accessing Account on the Web, you will be redirected to Invoice Management beginning next week (week of Sept. 1). I encourage you to watch the overview video and learn more about the features of Invoice Management. If you still have questions or need to request access, our Invoice Management Team is available to assist you.”
Further Reading: Railway Age Engineering Editor and RT&S Editor-in-Chief David C. Lester shared how UP leverages state-of-the-art inspection technology in an August report. Click here to read it.
