During his first week on the job, new CSX CEO Joseph Hinrichs held a town hall meeting at which he said the Class 1 carrier has no plans to end its precision scheduled railroading operating plan.
However, as reported by Trains magazine on its website, Hinrichs acknowledged that CSX needs to make improvements in its customer service and organizational culture.
The former Ford Motor Company executive said the latter two will be among his primary focuses at the helm of CSX.
“I was a customer for a couple decades. Our customers don’t really love us,” Hinrichs said. “We [Ford] did business with rail because we had to, not because we wanted to.”
Hinrichs said improving service will require having enough operating crew members to handle shipper demands and demonstrating to those shippers that CSX can deliver the service shippers demand.
The key to doing that will be teamwork, which means creating a culture where all employees feel appreciated and valued, work well together, support each other, and are proud to work at the railroad.
“Great teammates . . . don’t cuss at somebody, they don’t belittle somebody. And so hold yourself to that standard and hold your teammates to that standard and we can raise the level of our performance just by how we work together,” Hinrichs said.
He said he’ll be spending much of his first few weeks in the field meeting employees and learning about rail operations.
During the town hall meeting Hinrichs said he has no plans to make management changes.
Hinrich drew a few laughs when noting that he is an Ohio State fan and the colors of CSX locomotives are too much like the colors of rival University of Michigan.
He quickly added that he wasn’t saying the locomotives liveries will change to OSU colors of scarlet and gray.
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