Norfolk Southern Railway's CEO said that due to the COVID-19 pandemic "getting us all out of the race", long-term service disruptions, American shippers have lost confidence in rail shipping goods, and restoring network resilience is essential to long-term winning business.
NS was established in 1980 and is mainly engaged in the railway transportation of raw materials, intermediate products and finished products. It is distributed in the southeast, east and midwest. It exchanges with railway transportation companies and travels to and from other parts of the United States. The company also transports overseas goods through several Atlantic and Gulf coastal ports, providing the most extensive intermodal transportation network in the eastern half of the United States.
"For decades, the railway has had a cycle of service interruption. They tend to happen every three to four years for reasons that are easy to classify after the fact but difficult to predict, "Shaw said. "These disruptions have undermined the confidence customers need to rely structurally on railways rather than highways. A company can't expect to deliver sustainable growth if it offers a poor service offering to its customers every three years, Norfolk Southern chief executive Alan Shaw said.
Shaw says the key is to build resilience so NS can handle boom-and-bust cycles better than in the past. NS has taken several steps to address multimodal transport services, including its latest iteration of precisely planned railroads, which includes streamlining its network outside Chicago, where the company operates four container terminals.
NS said there is also a need to build resilience in the labor force, and the massive loss of workers will only exacerbate staff shortages.
The American Railroad Association (AAR) said in a statement that the current interim agreement passed by Congress stipulates that workers will receive a 24% salary increase over the next five years and allow employees to take three days of unpaid sick leave for medical appointments. This provision was not included in the previous proposal. However, this agreement does not provide any paid sick leave, nor does it adjust the schedule and other attendance systems.
in the past six years, the railway company has laid off about 30% of its employees, which has caused the remaining workers to need to complete more work. When the demand for delivery surges, orders continue to be delayed and canceled. Business groups also warned that supply disruptions caused by manpower shortages would fuel inflation.
starting next year, NS will pile all sea containers into piles, similar to sea ports, to cope with the long-term growth in port volume. Letting containers in the stack will enable the railway to increase terminal capacity, especially where there is no adjacent land to add more storage space.
Forwardernet.com