CSX First Recipient of Loop Capital‘s Bill Thompson Award
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
CSX photo.
Loop Capital Markets has named CSX recipient of its inaugural W.F. Thompson Award for Class I Operating Performance for 2023, “highlighting CSX’s success in driving its growth strategy by leveraging strong operational execution.” The award recognizes the Class I railroad with the best operational performance in a calendar year, in Loop Capital’s estimation.
“By any measure, CSX had a strong year in 2023,” said Loop Capital Managing Director Rick Paterson in his final 2023 weekly report on rail operational and service trends. CSX, he said, “was the first of the four U.S. Class I railroads to recover from the 2022 Service Crisis, by a wide margin, and quickly locked in strong and remarkably consistent operating performance over the course of the year.”
Paterson highlighted that CSX’s average network train velocity last year was its highest-ever recorded, “demonstrating minimal week-to-week volatility.” He further noted that CSX reduced terminal dwell in 2023, ending the year with an average dwell that ranks-third best in the railroad’s history.
“The high velocity and reduced dwell significantly contributed to the consistent on-time delivery of customer freight,” Paterson said, adding that “CSX has continued to perform at a high level in 2024, recording an average train velocity of 19.3 MPH across the system in the first week, a 5% improvement compared to the first week of 2023.”
CSX Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Mike Cory attributed the railroad’s “consistent service excellence to a robust operating model that strives for excellence in safety, service and efficiency, which can only be truly achieved through the strengthening ONE CSX culture that underpins and enables the company’s performance. The CSX railroading model has been pivotal for service improvement, and our ONE CSX transformation of the railroad culture is taking hold and driving us to new levels of performance. As we navigate past pandemic-induced supply chain challenges, I am confident that our culture of collaboration will help us further improve our performance metrics in 2024.”
Cory emphasized that CSX’s “strong service performance is integral to its strategy of business growth, which involves converting shipments from truck to rail and attracting new customer facilities to rail-served properties.”
William F. “Bill” Thompson (1926-2004), for whom the award is named, is a legendary figure in railroading. Thompson retired as executive vice president at Burlington Northern. During his career, he held executive positions with the Frisco, St. Louis Terminal and Rock Island. The late Hunter Harrison “learned railroading at the knee of a brilliant, profane Texan, [Bill] Thompson, who was on his way to becoming VP Operations of the Frisco in the late 1960s when Hunter encountered him at Tennessee Yard in Memphis,” railroad author and historian Fred Frailey wrote in a December 2017 Trains obituary on Harrison. “’Young man,’ said Thompson, spreading his arm toward a sea of freight cars, ‘what do you see out there?’ ‘A lot of good business, Mr. Thompson,’ replied Harrison. Retorted Thompson: ‘What? Good business? See, that’s the difference, Hunter. I see a bunch of delayed cars, and you say it’s good business.’ Hunter Harrison retold that story the rest of his life.”
