Operator: Our next question is from Chris Wetherbee with Citi.
Chris Wetherbee : Congrats, Lance on the next stage of your career here. I guess wanted to take a minute and talk a little bit about sort of resources and where you think you are. I know, Eric, you talked about pulling some cost levers that were around locomotives and other assets. But Jennifer, what should we expect with head count as we move forward? And sort of when are you appropriately staffed for what you think the volume outlook might be, not just for this quarter but maybe the next several quarters?
Jennifer Hamann : Yes. So I’ll maybe let Eric talk about how he feels about crew staffing levels. But just overall, in terms of our head count, we think as you look to the back half of the year, it’s probably going to be, I’ll call it, flattish or so from where we’re at right now. We’re continuing to hire and train and make sure that we’ve got a good robust pipeline so that we’re able to serve our customers appropriately. But just from an absolute FTE basis, that’s kind of how we see things in the back half.
Eric Gehringer : Yes. And just picking up from there, Chris. Clearly, what you’ve seen in our performance is that we have reduced the amount of hiring that we’ve been doing now. We stay very connected with Kenny as in his outlook, both for the fourth quarter as well as 2024, and we’re going to continue to adjust as we have to what that demand is. It’s the same way I view the locomotive work that was accomplished during the quarter. And the team stored 200 locomotives. And if you actually look for now and this month, we’re actually above 200. We’re treating it the exact same way. So the demand that’s out there, find your resource base accordingly.
Lance Fritz : We should be crystal clear as well, Jennifer and Eric, Chris, that there’s still work to be done. When we look into the third and fourth quarter, Eric outlined some of it in his prepared comments, but we are not yet volume-variable with what we’re seeing in the marketplace. We took a step towards that in the second quarter. We got to keep taking steps in the third and fourth.
Operator: The next question is from the line of Justin Long with Stephens.
Justin Long : Lance, congrats from my end as well. I wanted to ask a question about the outlook for the second half. You mentioned fuel being a headwind and in addition to that, the labor cost. Do you think EPS in the second half will be lower than the first half? And then maybe, Jennifer, you could comment on the run rate for these labor-related costs as we move into 2024. I’m just curious if we can take this $50 million to $70 million and annualize it or if that is expected to change?
Lance Fritz : Jennifer, why don’t I start? We’re not going to provide some incremental or new guidance as regards earnings into the back half. But Jennifer, you did a good job of outlining what the headwinds are, and why don’t we unpack that a little bit?
Jennifer Hamann : Yes. I mean, certainly, the one headwind we did size for you is the $0.50 impact, the negative year-over-year impact we expect to see on EPS from fuel in the third and fourth quarters. In terms of moving into 2024, so if you think about that $50 million from the sick leave agreements that I mentioned, most of those agreements were really effective in the second half. We had our non-ops that started a little bit in the first half. So I think you can think about that as being something that will carry over and repeat itself in the first half of 2024. Beyond that, in terms of the implementation of work rest, we’re really reluctant to — and really, it would be difficult for us to size that more precisely because it is going to depend on the timing of how we roll that out as well as the employee behavior that we see with that.
