“Challenges include staffing, heightened economic demand, port congestion, as well as historic lows in available warehouse and trucking capacity. “The entire transportation and logistics industry is experiencing a perfect storm of challenges, and we’re not immune to those,” railroad spokesman Thomas Crosson says. NS had 7,463 people in train and engine service in September, level with August 2021 but down 6% from a year ago, according to the latest Surface Transportation Board data available. In September a record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs, according to federal data, yet job openings remained stubbornly near record high levels. Norfolk Southern’s struggle to retain train crews and hire conductors mirrors trends in the industry and across the broader economy. NS says its new conductors and conductor trainees are also leaving the railroad at higher rates. NS is experiencing higher than normal attrition among its train crews and is having trouble hiring new conductors due to the tight labor market. Traffic volume is not the culprit: NS volume was flat in the third quarter and was down slightly in October. Birmingham again is a hot spot: Dwell at Norris Yard currently stands at 46.5 hours, up from 32 in the first week of October and an average of 29.7 hours in September. Terminal dwell is up 27%, with cars sitting more than 36 hours at five yards in the Southeast. Since the first week of October the number of loaded cars not moving in more than 48 hours nearly doubled, to 3,903, while the average number of trains holding per day has surged 123%. Other performance metrics are trending in the wrong direction, too. Since the first week of October the railroad’s velocity has fallen 17%. 5, the lowest weekly velocity in the railroad’s performance data since May 2018, when congestion centered on Birmingham, Ala., bogged down service in the Southeast. “Operations are suddenly in the ditch,” Rick Paterson, an analyst with Loop Capital Partners, wrote in a note to clients last week.Īverage train speed on NS slumped to 17.6 mph in the week ending Nov. Some expressed concern that the railroad is teetering on the brink of a meltdown as train speed falls, cars spend more time in yards, and a rising number of trains per day are held due to a lack of crews, power, and other reasons. Murray)ĪTLANTA - Norfolk Southern’s service has deteriorated over the past six weeks amid crew shortages and operational changes, according to shippers and connecting railroads. Terminal dwell is one of the measures of NS’s increasing service issues. The rear of Norfolk Southern road freight 12Z (left) has just cleared the south end of the former Norfolk & Western Vardo Yard in Hagerstown, Md., as a local yard job waits on Oct.
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