Status of the Railroad - A Message from Kenny Rocker, EVP, Marketing & Sales

Announcement Number: CN2021-61
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: September 24, 2021

To Our Customers,

Yesterday I met with several industry leaders at the Northeast Association of Rail Shippers (NEARS) at their Fall Conference. It was great being able to attend a conference in person again — it was my first one in more than 18 months. Thank you NEARS for hosting the event.

As we head into the fourth quarter, I am optimistic about the opportunities in front of us. Demand continues to remain strong — peak season for holiday shopping and a robust fall harvest is expected. Industrial production is forecasted to be around 4% in the fourth quarter.

Since the bridge in Northern California was returned to service in early August, we have been working to return our railroad to a more normalized state. This has included taking targeted actions to maximize resource productivity and alleviate congestion in order to speed up the network. These actions are paying off — we are encouraged by the progress we’ve made over the last several weeks, despite facing some setbacks from Hurricanes Ida and Nicholas.

Here is a quick look at our current 7-day metrics compared to the last week in August:

  • Car velocity improved by 11% and back to over 200 miles per day for the third consecutive week in a row.
  • Train velocity has improved by 9%.
  • Car dwell reduced by 7%.
  • On-time performance improving for both our manifest and intermodal service products.

Dedicated to Improving Your Digital Experience
As we continue to improve our service metrics, I want you to know that we haven’t stopped our focus on enhancing your digital experience. We continue to listen to your feedback and are working closely with our Technology team to provide you a more seamless experience as you do business with us.

Our user experience team gathered customer insights and directly fed them to our technology development teams to quickly deliver solutions to your pain points. We’ve made more than 40 enhancements so far to improve your usability and visibility within our shipping, paying and support applications. If you have any questions regarding our user experience initiative for customers or general customer experience feedback, please contact CX@up.com.

Additionally, we now offer more than 40 services in our Application Programming Interface (API) suite of products to help you manage your supply chain more efficiently. Our latest API service, View and Create Empty Car Orders, allows you to insert your demand forecast and monitor empty cars being supplied to your orders in real-time. To learn more about these products and how they can benefit your business, visit our API Developer Center.

Thank You for Your Business
As always, thank you for your business and patience as we work to build upon the progress that we’re making to improve our service levels. I look forward to sharing more good updates with you next month.

Sincerely,
Small | Kenny Rocker Signature
Kenny Rocker
Executive Vice President, Marketing & Sales