“You have to give Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw a standing ovation for his performance at the railroad’s investor day last month.”

In his latest column, Bill Stephens of Trains focused on Norfolk Southern and President and CEO Alan Shaw as the railroad with the “winning” formula.

Stephens homed in on remarks by Shaw at the company’s Investor Day in December where he described our strategy for growth. That strategy, balancing reliable and resilient service, continuous productivity improvement, and smart and sustainable growth, is designed to take our focus beyond operating ratio and evolving our approach to Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR).  

“Our entire organization is aligned around delivering continuous productivity improvement. We mention PSR frequently — but this is a different kind of PSR. Reducing operating ratio is not our singular focus. We strive for more,” Shaw told investors and analysts. “We will innovate solutions that help our customers grow and compete in an evolving global supply chain. We will make it easier for our customers to ship by rail — delivering the efficiency of rail, coupled with the simplicity of truck.”

Stephens took note.

“You have to give Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw a standing ovation for his performance at the railroad’s investor day last month. Using logic as a sledgehammer, it took him just 10 minutes to demolish two of the things that have hurt rail service and put a lid on traffic growth: Excessive cost-cutting and an overemphasis on the operating ratio,” he wrote in his article.

Read the article here and read more from NS Investor Day here.