Alex Behring

Meaning the customers around the railroad all wanted to be serviced by the railroad and they couldn't because the service wasn't good enough.

And the focus on basically churning the assets faster and more safely was really the driver of the company's success.

which drove me in turn to spend a week a month in overalls driving trains and going around the country.

That allowed me first to get close to the engineers, the business basically, which were crucial, the people that run the trains, and understand how important they were in that business in every respect.

and do things to improve their lives that you could only do if you were out there with them.

For instance, I was young and athletic and sitting in a locomotive for eight hours in those really old chairs was really tough.

And the cabins were cold because they were not sealed properly.

So all of that was not expensive to address.

We didn't have the money to buy brand new

General electric locomotives, but we could fix that.

And we could also fix all the engineering quarters where people sleep between changeovers, which were also in dire straits conditions.

And we were able to get them all fixed, get new beds, get satellite TV for sports and get them all that done.

That really drove a lot of support.

from the engineers, we were able to then capitalize on that by having onboard computers rank people on their fuel and safety performance nationwide.

I mean, railroaders are very proud people.

And that drove 30% reduction in fuel, for example, which was the number one cost in the company.

That drove much higher asset terms because we then did the same thing in the yards and there were all these ideas and participation.

And these people all had the solutions for things.

They just needed to be engaged and to address this operating challenge, which was the biggest value creation driver.

So that taught me a little bit about managing by walking around and not sitting in an office and getting fed information through PowerPoint.