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

Announcement Number: CN2023-6
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: January 30, 2023

To Our Customers,

First, I want to thank you for your patience and collaboration as our team continues to work hard to recover the network. Admittedly 2023 started out much different than I had envisioned – Mother Nature has had her own plans. We rolled out of 2022 and into 2023 with extreme weather events that were widespread across the network – from heavy rains and snow in California to blizzards and artic temperatures in the Midwest. Our Operating team battled the elements and continue to improve our network fluidity. Our service metrics are trending in the right direction, and I’m encouraged that we have the momentum to keep moving forward.

Our Metrics
Here are our latest weekly metrics reported to the Surface Transportation Board (STB) on January 27. These metrics are compared to performance in mid-April 2022, and are based on the STB definitions for industry reporting:

  • Car Velocity: Improved 19% to 211 miles per day.
  • First Mile, Last Mile: Flat at 91%.
  • Trip Plan Compliance (TPC):
    • TPC Bulk (unit train): Improved 18 points to 84%
    • TPC Manifest: Improved 20 points to 79%
    • TPC Intermodal: Improved 16 points to 89%

We’ve made solid progress on our crew hiring to help build resiliency in our network. Since 2022, we have graduated more than 1,300 crew employees; and currently have more than 550 employees in training. Our hiring efforts will continue this year as we backfill for attrition and target locations in our Northern region where crew challenges persist. We have plans to continue to utilize borrow-outs to supplement crew shortfalls. Currently we have around 250 borrow-outs to support customer demand.

Keeping Customer Experience at the Forefront
We continually look for ways to enhance your customer experience with Union Pacific by listening to your needs. We have invested in a couple technology enhancements to make it easier to do business with us.

Shipment Management Inventory Metrics Dashboard
To help you manage your transportation pipeline more effectively, we enhanced the Shipment Management dashboard to provide you more information about the inventory at your facilities. We increased your visibility to your release rates, available capacity and inventory on hand.

New Platform for Accessing Freight Invoices Coming Soon
We heard loud and clear about the slow system performance you were experiencing with our Account on the Web (AOW) tool. We spent one-on-one time with users to understand what we needed to work on to make viewing and disputing invoices a simpler process. I’m happy to report that our Finance and Tech teams have developed a new Invoice Management tool rolling out in early February with plans to phase out the AOW tool in the coming months.

You will begin to see emails and notices within MyUPRR.com to get you familiar with Invoice Management prior to the shutdown of AOW. You can learn more about what we have planned here.

Thank You
Our goal is to move your freight more consistently and reliably while improving your experience as a customer. I look forward to sharing our progress on all of these fronts as the year unfolds. As always, thank you for your business.

Sincerely,

Small | Kenny Rocker Signature

Kenny Rocker
Executive Vice President, Marketing & Sales