Steve Hansen: Yes, good evening, guys. Thanks. Look, your network-wide improvements in speed and dwell have been pretty striking over the past several months notwithstanding last week or two. I’m just hoping you could point to where these gains have been coming from more specifically on a geographic basis and what that might imply for some of the prior congestion issues you’ve acknowledged in Mexico. And then I guess, ultimately, what it means for bringing on the revenue synergies down there as well? Thanks.
Keith Creel: Steve great question. Let me say this, and I’m going to have two gentlemen that are driving an easiness of per day, both Mark. Mark part of the storage, John of part of the store and their teams. That’s the beauty of this. It’s not singular. It’s diversified. What Mark has done in Canada relative to driving well down train speed up or 100 series trains and never run better. The focus there and the intensity and the opportunity to drive not only train speed, but asset turns of locomotive velocity and fuel efficiency. Mark and his team are doing a phenomenal job. And at the same time, part of the task force, we’ve taken a challenge, which comes with growth. We turned it into an opportunity. And John took his team and has turned into an organization that’s focused on process, focused on PSR principles, where we turn assets, where we get better for our customer, we whiteboard of the GM, we whiteboard with the Lantus, we whiteboard with our customers so that we can identify what’s possible of the we work to strive to achieve the art of the possible.
I mean it’s all about asset turn, speed and velocity. And as a result of that, too, although I said I’m going to let these guys talk, I get a little card of way here. Part of what we learned that we’re super excited about is with a little bit of strategic investment much like in the play book of PSR in the past. This isn’t about cutting costs. It’s about strategically and surgically investing money to create capacity and resiliency to eliminate bottlenecks, turn assets more. It’s about locomotive productivity. It’s about train speed. It’s about crew productivity. It’s about fewer recrews. It’s about turning assets, creating cars of capacity through doing that for our customers so that we can create more loads with less cars. It’s PSR 2.0 and John has done a masterful job of integrating and starting that evolution in Mexico since that task force was created.
So again, a couple of highlights, John, a couple of highlights, Mark you guys have done it. I get — I’m the proud guy that gets to talk about it. I love it when I see it happen, but let me give these guys a chance to share a couple of highlights for you, Steve as well as the rest of our investors to give you some meat on the bones so to speak, not just a bunch of rhetoric, but real live examples of the of the possible.
Mark Redd: Yes. So if we think about just 100 Series in Canada, I mean we’ve shortened some of the trains up just a bit, just to get more truck speed across the network. And that’s been — we’ve been able to produce locomotives by doing that. We’ve been able to give a product to John that he can sell to the marketplace. So that’s some of the areas we focused on. Large focus on KCSR property where we’ve had boots on the ground of the switching yards that we spoke about this in the previous quarters, we spoke about some of the in-train repairs that we’re doing at Kansas City and really just ramping up mechanical operations. Some of the things we haven’t spoken too much about. It’s not train speed, it’s not this other stuff, but it’s about working in diesel shops.
We’re going to take 2024, spend some time in the diesel shops and do our own overhauls where we’ve had to do that in the past and give it to a third party. We’ll do more of that in-house. We’ll also leverage the top plant that we have in Shreveport, Louisiana, leverage the wheel shop that we have in [indiscernible] and use that cross-border to be to in-house our wheels put the chamber in the right of way where we need to and enhance our engineering gains as well. We reduced some of that headcount of engineering gains, but also this would be the first year that we can work toward system gains with KCSR and also the service line. And with that, I’ll hand it over to John to talk a little bit about Mexico.
John Brooks: Yes. Thanks, Mark and thanks, Keith. I think I’ll use the same phrase, because we’ve got the same approach we’ve taken a boots on the ground effort to help stabilize and improve Mexico operations in 2023. And the task force was a tri-national task force of railroaders who went to the central part of Mexico around the automotive hub to really streamline the businesses there and unlock the potential of the fluidity in the south of Mexico and worked progressively northward and improved our dwell in San Luis Potosi, Monterrey and our border terminal at Sanchez Yard. That all started to really pull together the velocity, the resource utilization, the improvements on locomotive use, locomotive productivity and even labor productivity.
Since then, the task force has worked to embed best practices that we share or inherited from the CPKC merger. And now we’re turning our attention to you improving cycle times on some of the bulk business or some of the more complex larger customers in this steel and metals sector. And we’re using the time that we spent within the ground to really pinpoint structural improvements, engineering out choke points, and that’s reflected in our 2024 capital allotment. As you said, Keith very precise and targeted to continuing the fluidity, the opportunity to grow the business and to continue to pivot to growth.
Steve Hansen: Its brilliant guys. Thanks.
Operator: Our next question will come from Scott Group with Wolfe Research.
Scott Group: Hey, thanks. Afternoon. John with everything going on at Suez and Panama, just curious of your thoughts if Vancouver or Lázaro or if one is better positioned than the other two to benefit from that? And then just separately, Keith, I know we’ve got the labor negotiations going on up in Canada. Any update you can give us of how to think about that. Thank you.
Keith Creel: Let me start with that one on labor. I’ll give you a quick update and maybe still a little bit of John or Nadeem add some more color. So on the labor side, list, and I remain cautiously optimistic. I’m realist with the table. We actually reengage today we’re with the TCRC through the end of this week, I believe, I believe he is doing the same thing and I’m going to remain optimistic we can get to a negotiated settlement. That said, if not, as investors are going to have a heads up effectively the way the process works, of you reach an impasse, either party could file for conciliation and from the time that happens, and it would be very public if it happens, where we deserve notice or they deserve notice. It’s a 96-day process before you would at the earliest experience of potential strike.
So again, I’m going to give this thing optimism. I think it’s in our best interest is in our employees’ best interest and our customers’ best interest, obviously, in the nation’s best interest to keep everybody working. And I hope that’s what happens. But again, if not, you’re going to have quite a bit of heads up in time to be aware of what’s going on. And reality to, the Suez, the Panama, Lázaro, West Coast US, West Coast Canada, let me just say this, and I’ll hand it over to John. Lázaro is a whole lot closer to Panama than Prince Rupert is. Over to you, John.
John Brooks: Scott like Lázaro, Panama another tool in our toolbox of play right now, like I’m really surprised volumes have recovered pretty strongly in Vancouver. And I don’t think that has anything to do with the — that is a whole different issue, and I don’t see that really being a volume driver due to our West Coast ports. But I do see our value proposition of multiple less port outlets of the ability to get through the Panama Canal, utilizing the railroad down there, being an opportunity for us. It just broadens the discussion with all of these customers. And I fully expect you’re going to see us continue to ramp up the volume through that terminal of Long row. Obviously, the big thing I’m watching right now is the East Coast labor situation. And that’s the area that really could present itself some opportunities for us.
