Railroad recoveries are almost always uneven (CSX the recent exception), and we’re seeing that with a mixed bag of data this week regarding CPKC’s efforts to rebound from the operational disruptions from the May 3 cutover of the old KCS Management Control System (MCS) to CP’s TYES system within the U.S. On balance, progress is being made, but we’re not out of the woods yet.
We’ll start as usual with full system terminal dwell (Canada, U.S. and Mexico), with a peak of 11.4 hours in the week ending June 6, followed by an improvement to 11.1 hours through June 13, and then a small backstep to 11.2 last week. An uptick of 0.1 hours (six minutes) is insignificant, but regardless maintains dwell above CPKC’s historically poor benchmark of 11 hours:
Here’s the updated chart showing dwell at individual yards. In terms of switching volumes, Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss., are the two biggest on the legacy KCS network and basically ground zero for this problem. In the week ending June 20, Shreveport deteriorated from 27.8 to 28.6 hours, while Jackson improved from 26.1 to 23.9 hours. Recent momentum at Jackson Yard is encouraging, but Shreveport remains uncooperative and, ultimately, this problem can’t be fixed until Shreveport is fixed. Laredo also went the wrong way, up 2.1 hours:
Kansas City remains unaffected, at least in terms of the data, while to the south, Sanchez Yard in northern Mexico deteriorated for a third week, to 39 hours, which is a nine-month high. If we look ever further south, dwell in the week ending June 20 also rose at Monterrey (15-week high) and San Luis Potosi (16-week high). Monterrey is a red flag, because the yard is too small, landlocked within a city, and in a heavily industrialized area requiring extensive local operations. For these reasons it has devolved into a congested mess twice in recent years. CPKC shouldn’t get distracted and take its eye off this ball.
Last week there was some encouraging data on the number of cars within the U.S. that were idle for 48+ hours (we use “slow-to-move” as shorthand), and here’s that updated chart. Again, the story is muddied, because after a big drop from 15,943 to 8,476 two weeks ago, it backpedaled up to 10,798 last week. Not good. We’ve also added U.S. cars on line to the chart this week, represented by the red line, and that’s showing a consistent drop over the past three weeks:
Finally, CPKC responded to an STB inquiry with a letter on June 20 describing the cutover problems in detail and the railroad’s plan to fix it. The inquiry and response both referenced CPKC’s manifest on-time performance and first mile/last mile performance, which is collected under the new reciprocal switching reporting requirement (EP711). Here are those numbers, with a clear bottom in the first week of June, followed by two sequentially better weeks:
So that’s where we stand. For what it’s worth, CPKC expects service to be largely back to normal by the end of July, although the nature of Class I networks, with all the inherent feedback loops, make these things very difficult to forecast in terms of timing.
