Clarence Gooden
But I think it’s important to note that volume is not weak.
Bill Greene
Okay. Great.
Michael Ward
We’re answering a hypothetical question, Bill. Specifically when you think of locomotives is probably the most expensive aspect of that. I’ve got roughly a thousand people in the pipeline and I got a roughly a thousand people — potential attrition, so that I think offsets itself and then on the locomotive side we’ve got lease returns we can work through so I think citing back to the old days of ’08, ’09 where we did the math, improved variability that has come into this industry, so we monitor that very closely.
Bill Greene
Yeah, no things look strong obviously. It’s more just folks worried if the oil price is indicative of some weakening that’s bound to come so just trying to think through what your flexibility is. Thanks for the time.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from Ken Hoexter with Merrill Lynch.
David Baggs
Good morning Ken.
Ken Hoexter, Merrill Lynch
Good morning. Just a quick question on export coal. Clarence can you talk about what is left on contract within the export side and what is still variable? Just looking at the market-rate, it just seems like stuff that the export coal side just shouldn’t be moving at these prices so maybe just some thoughts on the export side?
Clarence Gooden
Well, we have about 40% of the export contracts are currently export coal movements are currently under contract. The rest of it is up for negotiation. Does that answer your question?
Ken Hoexter
Yes, is that kind of typical? That at the 40% of that, obviously increasing amounts coming on to?
Clarence Gooden
I would say that it’s fairly typical this early in the cycle. Most of those metallurgical contracts as you’re aware tend to go more on quarterly basis but still tend to follow the traditional line of thinking which pretty much settles in March, April.
Ken Hoexter
Okay, and then just a follow-up on the service metrics issue. You hit on the dwell and velocity. Oscar can you talk about the on time performance? Just seems like it continues to remain at that 50% level. What needs to happen to get that back? Is that decreasing congestion? Is it just fixing something getting more locomotives and crew? Can you walk us through that a little bit?
Oscar Munoz
We really are down to that point Ken that locomotives are the biggest last sort of aspect of this. And we’ve got 200 over the course of 2014 and roughly 100 here in the first quarter, another 150 or so in the second quarter and our service measures and a lot of things will be almost pretty significantly correlated to the arrival of those locomotives. Crews have been trickling in over the course of the year so we’re in pretty decent shape there. It is a power issue up against this great volume that we’re getting. It’s important though, we are in essence open for business or fluidity has gotten a little bit better across the network. Our cost structure is improving. The span around our misses is a little bit narrower. We’ve got crews and locomotives coming online and the infrastructure that we’ve been building has improved fluidity so we are feeling good about where we are starting the year.
Ken Hoexter
Wonderful. Appreciate the time.
