Four pillars are critical for us to achieve that:
Safety: Seventy-six G&W railroads finished 2024 reportable injury-free, while 39 operations were zero-and-zero (no reportable injuries or human factor incidents). Moreover, 14 of our operations were recognized during our annual June Safety Month for working 20 years or more without injury. G&W’s goal of sending everyone home the way they came to work has been foundational for decades and will remain at the forefront of all we do.
In 2024, we developed an annual safety summit that gathers managers from a handful of our railroads with the biggest opportunity for safety improvement. Carving dedicated time at the beginning of the year for these roads to identify challenges, recognize underlying trends, analyze practices with our corporate safety team, and build detailed safety action plans yielded a 58% decrease in reportable injuries among this group last year. We are optimistic that we’ll see similar results for 2025.
Service: G&W relentlessly strives to be easy to do business with and responsive when customers present new or expanding opportunities. Our sales team spent many hours proactively undergoing training in 2024 to further their account management and business development skills. Our operations teams are spending more time analyzing operating plans specific to individual customer needs so we can be as flexible as possible. Our IT and commercial teams are developing tools to provide customers with real-time information about their shipments. And we have been diligently promoting our transloading and intermodal capabilities so that customers can take advantage of the safety and economic benefits of using rail as part of their supply chain.
Technology: As just one example of several technology initiatives under way, last year, railroads in our National Region piloted a new project that uses a Cordel Rugged LiDAR device to scan clearances along our rights of way. As we expand testing across our U.S. footprint in 2025, these accurate measurements will give us confidence to undertake more high-and-wide shipments, which are in high demand across the Northeast and Midwest, while simultaneously identifying close clearances that we can address.
Our IT team continues to build applications, such as our locomotive inspection and incident notification apps, that enable frontline employees and managers to capture real-time data in standard form, making us more efficient and improving our day-to-day decision making.
Elsewhere, our participation in the RailPulse coalition to equip the North American railcar fleet with GPS and other telematics, as well as our partnership with Parallel Systems to test autonomous, battery-powered rail vehicles for shorter-haul container moves in more rural, lower-density areas along our lines, can help modernize our industry, improve the customer experience, and open new markets that have historically been dominated by truck.
People: Among G&W’s strategies for prioritizing a strong workforce are an emphasis on employee engagement and a commitment to developing leaders. Over the past two years, we have rolled out training designed to familiarize managers with leadership strategies, communicating and collaborating more effectively, and fostering a sense of belonging at their respective operations. We also increased our field HR presence and began meeting regularly with new hires throughout their certification process to support their acclimation to G&W and the rail industry, as well as gather feedback on improving the new-hire experience going forward. Moreover, G&W is leveraging technology, such as LinkedIn Learning, to personalize training for all employees, regardless of craft, level, location or schedule. We believe these efforts directly contributed to an almost 5% reduction in turnover at our company since 2022.
We’re continuously improving our talent acquisition by honing in on local recruiting strategies to expand applicant pools, reducing candidate handoffs throughout interviews, analyzing our time-to-hire and offer-to-hire ratios, and ensuring recruiters and hiring managers partner through the onboarding process to create a welcoming, informative environment for someone beginning their G&W career.
The focus of these pillars—operating safely for the benefit of employees, customers and communities; elevating our service to meet the ever-changing needs of customers; innovating at our company and with the entire rail industry to improve safety, service, and efficiency; and taking care of our people to ensure we are the employer of choice—is The G&W Way that has sustained us for 126 years and will guide us through the 21st century.
