Union Pacific Redesigns Marketing & Sales Organization to Align with Evolving Customer Needs
Announcement Number: CN2017-74
Categories: General Announcements
Posted Date: September 15, 2017
To Our Customers,
Today we are announcing several changes to our Marketing & Sales organization to better align with your evolving needs, and I wanted to send you a letter highlighting these updates. We have redesigned our six major business units into four: Agricultural Products, Energy, Industrial and Premium. We are also refocusing our customer service center and consolidating four subsidiaries into one to help us better serve you.
The new Agricultural Products team will be led by Brad Thrasher and will include all of the markets previously under the Agricultural Products business unit, adding fertilizer.
Energy will be led by Linda Brandl and will include the previous Coal business team, in addition to frac sand, LPG and petroleum and wind markets.
Industrial will be led by Kenny Rocker and will include markets that comprised the previous Industrial Products business unit, excluding frac sand and wind, and adding industrial chemicals, plastics and soda ash markets from the former Chemicals business unit.
Premium will be led by Jason Hess and will include the markets we served in our former Intermodal and Automotive business units.
These changes more closely align our team structure around the markets we serve, giving us a focused opportunity to provide exceptional transportation products to you, our customers. For many of you, your markets overlapped multiple business teams; this new structure is stronger and more streamlined to meet your transportation needs and avoid unnecessary overlap.
In addition to the new business unit structure, we are changing the name of our National Customer Service Center to Customer Care & Support to more closely align with the core focus of that team, which will be led by Kari Kirchhoefer. We continue to look for ways to improve your customer experience, and the Customer Care & Support team plays an integral role in that mission.
Union Pacific is also expanding its Economic and Industrial Development team to enhance the work done with our customers and local economic development teams to provide additional transportation options for your markets not served directly by rail.
I am also excited to announce that effective November 1, Union Pacific Railroad will merge four subsidiaries — Union Pacific Distribution Services (UPDS), Streamline, ShipCarsNow and Insight Network Logistics (INL) into a single, wholly owned subsidiary: Loup Logistics Company, which will be led by Shawntell Kroese.
Loup will combine the respective strengths of UPDS, Streamline, ShipCarsNow and INL to provide innovative transportation and logistics services that help connect shippers to rail.
As a consolidated logistics company, Loup will be better able to support your long-term growth, as well as that of Union Pacific. Merging the subsidiaries yields a single company with a more robust shipping and logistics services portfolio and an employee base with a greater breadth of expertise, both of which help us better serve you.
In the near future, our teams will reach out to provide further details on these changes. We are excited for the future and we are fully committed to providing you innovative transportation solutions. Together, we continually strive to fulfill our vision to build America.
Sincerely,
Beth Whited
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
Marketing & Sales
Union Pacific Railroad