Status of the Railroad - A Message from Kenny Rocker, EVP, Marketing & Sales
Announcement Number: CN2024-4
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: January 26, 2024
To Our Customers,
It’s been a month since my last update to you and I wanted to give you my perspective as we start the new year. Our service product had great momentum as we hit the ground running strong in 2024. Then in early January, Mother Nature had other plans and delivered back-to-back winter storms that spread across most of our network – from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Lakes. However, our Engineering and Operations teams were prepared – they worked around-the-clock to quickly restore operations from the harsh weather events and minimized the impact on our customers. I’m proud of the teams’ efforts and resilience.
While winter is still here, the railroad overall is healthy, and our operations are gaining back momentum. We have the necessary resources and capacity to meet your demand. For our transportation crews, in 2023 we graduated over 1,960 crew employees and have more than 500 employees in our training pipeline. For locomotives, our improved network fluidity continues to increase our locomotive productivity and we continue to have adequate supply to meet customer demand. The Operating team is delivering more reliable service and our Commercial team is ready to work with you to help you win in the marketplace.
New Phoenix Intermodal Facility Scheduled to Begin Operations
We are one step closer to opening our new intermodal rail yard in the heart of Phoenix. Since announcing the new international intermodal facility in November, our Engineering and Operating teams have been preparing the terminal within our downtown railyard. The new terminal offers regional shippers and receivers in Arizona a fast, sustainable rail option to move product in international containers into and out of Southern California that is cost competitive and removes trucks from our nation's congested highways. Customers can begin working with the exclusive drayage experts, Duncan & Son Lines to bill shipments beginning on February 1, 2024. You can learn more about our new Phoenix intermodal facility here.
Technology Advances Improve Customer Experience
We are in the final stretch of implementing Invoice Management — our replacement system for Account on the Web (AOW). Invoice Management is the new tool to manage your invoices and offers customers an entirely new and improved interface that allows you to view, print, search, download, dispute invoices and accept refunds. Invoice Management and AOW will run in parallel until all functions have been migrated to Invoice Management. I encourage you to try Invoice Management now to become familiar with the new tool and be prepared as we begin to phase out AOW.
Thank You
We remain committed to providing you with a safe, solid service product and look forward to growing the business with you. Thank you for choosing Union Pacific as your rail transportation partner, we appreciate your business!
Sincerely,
Kenny Rocker
Executive Vice President, Marketing & Sales