Developing and adhering to a structured operating plan gives railroads a step-by-step process to running their trains. The structure is required to drive long-term success. And whether it’s your daily routine or running a 23-state railroad network, having a plan is important. In recent years, it’s been a template of fewer but longer scheduled trains adhering to regimented plans across wide swaths of a network where managers and railroaders hand off responsibility to the next terminal. I’ve heard it countless times— follow the plan.
But plans are vulnerable to variables outside of the planner’s control. Railroads are especially vulnerable to unexpected changes. Innumerable risks threaten a plan’s follow through. Most are relatively minor, and train schedules may compensate for these line-of-road setbacks with built-in contingency time. But what about bigger issues that no one sees coming? A 1,000-year-flood in the Appalachians. A cargo ship striking a bridge in Baltimore that shutters railroads’ ability to deliver export coal. A large customer shuts its doors at the end of a line just as you built a plan to serve them.
With so much Class I railroad emphasis on operating plans, you would expect chaos when those plans run afoul of events. Middle managers look to higher ups for guidance, and leadership relies on feedback from the ballast line. In some cases, no one wants to take responsibility for what comes next, fearing it could be the wrong choice. In other cases, some people simply don’t like making decisions and would prefer to follow instructions.
The personality matrix aside, there have been recent examples where railroads’ teams show how quickly they can adapt to change, and it’s an encouraging phenomenon. Big railroads are more agile despite doing more with less. Even with such efficiencies and cost-conscious operating plans, railroads have shown they can pivot to change quickly.
CSX Transportation sprung into action after Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in early 2024. Within days, the railroad launched a new intermodal service linking New York with Baltimore. Coal trains bound for Baltimore export facilities were detoured to Newport News, Va., at a time when those terminals were flush with coal. Norfolk Southern implemented a near identical plan for its Lamberts Point facility in Norfolk, Va.
After the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated the Blue Ridge Mountains, Norfolk Southern worked with its Asheville, N.C., customers to develop temporary transload sites to keep that traffic from moving to the highways in a change that could have become permanent.
While it wasn’t as sudden of a change, the threat of an East Coast port strike cornered BNSF Railway and Union Pacific into absorbing more intermodal volume at West Coast ports for delivery to the Midwest. Both railroads quickly flexed up, leading to double-digit percentage increases to volume. Handling that type of traffic without time to plan is impressive.
In the past, ripe, low-hanging fruit would’ve been left on the vine beyond railroads’ reach as they scrambled to figure out how to handle the volume. Insufficient headcounts, too many locomotives in storage, or not enough rolling stock were among factors that often left that extra business out of reach.
But in the past few years, perhaps as a result of lessons learned from the pandemic or through railroads’ own focus on internal efficiencies, railroads become more agile and able to embrace changes more swiftly. This ability to change quickly makes railroads more relevant and valuable to customers, especially given the flexibility of trucking.
As we head into 2025, I’m encouraged by railroads’ recent successes in improvising. Showing that you can flex your operations to continue serving customers at times of unrest will strengthen the overall relationship between the railroad and shippers, making rail a more embedded partner of a customer’s supply chain.
Hats off to the leadership of today’s railroads who keep an open-mind and collaborate across their respective organizations with the collective goal of tending to a customer’s needs when plans go rogue.
— Carload Considerations is a monthly Trains News Wire commentary series. It discusses the freight rail industry, commodities, and economic trends. Its views are the opinion of its author with no particular emphasis on a specific railroad or shipper.
