Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw and COO John Orr joined Scott Group from Wolfe Research in New York on Wednesday. Together, they discussed the state of the industry and how Norfolk Southern is evolving to meet the needs of our customers and create a more resilient, productive railroad.

“It’s a balance,” Shaw says, “a responsible balance between service, productivity and growth, with safety at its core.”

Alan also reflected candidly on the past year and set the stage for our focus areas in 2024: “Now we know that we didn't deliver the productivity that we had promised last year. We had some disruptions due to East Palestine. We really needed to focus on safety. We really need to focus on service. We did that in a responsible and safe manner while protecting the franchise. And now we've got the platform to really dial in on productivity.”

John Orr, our newly appointed COO, is bringing this vision to life. He talked about how he and the team are implementing initiatives to advance our strategy that are already delivering meaningful results.

“So far over the last 3 weeks, dwell has come down in the major terminals that we're taskforcing and even cascading into the other terminals. That's showing itself in better fuel efficiencies as we put down locomotives,” Orr comments. “So not only are we running more on-time performance, we're then curtailing the access to resources and putting them into strategic storage …”

Alan and John both touted the importance of Norfolk’s talented people to the railroad’s success.. Over the last few weeks, both Alan and John have spent time in the field assessing the network and gathering the valuable perspectives from railroaders.

“We really wanted to stabilize people's perception on our management philosophy, our commitment to people and commitment to running a safe organization and so starting with safety, meeting over 11,000 craft employees and having the discussions on accountability, purpose and creating clarity and expectations for them performing their job properly,” John says.

Watch the full webinar at the link below, or on Norfolk Southern’s investor relations page.

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