On May 26, 2023, Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw addressed the North American Rail Shippers conference last week. In his remarks, Shaw outlined the progress that Norfolk Southern continues to make in East Palestine, Ohio. He also discussed the company’s efforts to provide safe, reliable service as a customer-centric, operations-driven organization.

Key excerpts from Shaw’s remarks are below:

Making it right in East Palestine

Each and every day we’ve got about 300 Norfolk Southern employees and contractors who are working on the environmental remediation, working on community assistance and helping East Palestine thrive.

Advancing safety

Last year, Norfolk Southern’s derailments were the lowest in the last two decades. And we can do better. Last year, Norfolk Southern’s employee injury rate was amongst the lowest in all of the industry and was the lowest in a decade. And we can do better. So, we are investing in safety.

Delivering for customers

Customer-centric means you listen to your customers…Operations-drive means having a vigilant standard of care for operations because we are an operating company. 100 percent of our revenue comes from our customers and 100 percent of our revenue is handled by operations.

I made the promise last year that in the first economic downturn, we’re not going to furlough. We’re going to keep hiring. Right now, there’s a lot of murkiness out there and no one knows what’s going to happen the second half of this year, but our pipeline of conductor trainees is near the highest on record because we’re hiring.

Last fall, I was at a customer event and one of our customers came up to me, somebody who we’d been given really lousy service to earlier in the year. He told me that what he was seeing from our team is this awesome alignment now between marketing and operations, service and growth.

Engaging our team members

Our employees trust us. I’ve asked them to trust that we’re going to run Norfolk Southern in a manner that they can be proud of five years from now, ten years from now. I’ve asked them to trust that we’re going to give them a safe operating environment and that they’re going to get home to their families in the same shape that they went to work that day.

Click below to read his remarks.