Status of the Railroad - A Message from Kenny Rocker, EVP, Marketing & Sales
Announcement Number: CN2024-13
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: June 26, 2024
To Our Customers,
This month, I’ve had the pleasure of spending time engaging with customers and discussing how we grow together. We’re building momentum in finding new solutions to meet your transportation needs and I look forward to the opportunities ahead.
Our team continues to focus on safety, service and operational excellence – working to drive improvements in our service product for you. It would be remiss of me not to provide an update on our network. Mother Nature has delivered some powerful weather events over the past few weeks impacting portions of our network. As I mentioned last month, we saw significant weather events throughout May especially in the southeast region of our network – from flash flooding and washouts to high winds and tornados. We have implemented multiple initiatives across the Texas Gulf areas to improve fluidity and operational efficiencies, including locomotive resource additions and temporary trip plan adjustments.
Last week, heavy rains struck portions of our network in Oklahoma, north Texas, Iowa and Minnesota leading to severe flooding. While our routes through Oklahoma and Texas are back in service, the flooding in Minnesota and Iowa washed out several key corridors and track segments. We continue to monitor water levels in these two states. Our Engineering team is actively repairing track where the water has receded, and is prepared with crews, equipment and track material to make repairs to other track segments as soon as the water recedes. In the meantime, we are rerouting traffic, when possible, around the impacted areas to keep shipments moving.
Be Prepared for Weather Events to Stay Safe
In the first half of 2024, several states experienced and are currently experiencing record rainfall and dangerous flooding. With the start of hurricane season, it is important that you take steps to be prepared when extreme weather hits.
If you have advanced notice of severe storms, you should divert rail cars to reduce the inventory levels at your facility to protect both the product and equipment from damage. We ask that you stay in communication with us so we understand your operations plan and we can resume service as quickly as possible. To help you prepare for and recover from flooding or a hurricane making landfall, here are some resources:
By following these tips, you can help reduce damage to rail cars and expedite local service recovery time.
Thank You
Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we work with customers impacted by the severe weather. Service challenges from one region of the network may affect other areas as we hold trains due to unsafe or inoperable track conditions. Our Operating and Engineering teams are working around the clock to restore service as quickly as possible and return to the level of service you expect.
Sincerely,
Kenny Rocker
Executive Vice President, Marketing & Sales