North American railcar utilization higher than 99% and lease renewals of 80% helped drive a solid first-quarter 2022 for GATX. Net income and diluted EPS more than doubled, compared to the year-ago period.
CSX’s first-quarter 2022 financials included whopping increases of 21% in net earnings and 26% in diluted earnings per share, despite a drop in volume.
CSX on April 19 reached what it’s calling a “tentative agreement” with the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, Transportation Division (SMART-TD) to provide SMART-TD Trainmen and Yardmasters with “monthly advance payments on future wage adjustments anticipated in settlement of the 2020 round of national bargaining between rail labor and the Class I railroads.” CSX also said it “notified its other labor organization representatives that it intends to reach agreements to provide identical payments to all unionized employees.”
ONxpress Transportation Partners has signed the project agreement for the On-Corridor Works Project of the GO Expansion program following a procurement process led by Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario.
The Reading & Northern Railroad reported that its T-1 steam locomotive, no. 2102, has successfully completed its test runs following its extensive five-year rebuild. The locomotive made a homecoming on April 6, stopping briefly at Reading Outer Station with hundreds of people looking on. It also visited Tamaqua on April 7-8, plus Nesquehoning and Jim Thorpe on April 8.
CSX Transportation has awarded a joint venture of STV and Michael Baker International a program and construction management services contract for its $466 million Howard Street Tunnel Clearance Program.
Joining organizations like the National Grain and Feed Association, the Sweetener Users Association (SUA) has a sent a letter to the Surface Transportation Board demanding that railroads take their lumps for service problems.
FROM THE EDITOR, APRIL 2022 ISSUE: A while ago, I wrote a column on the euphemistic language (“words that hide the truth, that conceal reality,” as George Carlin put it) that has invaded corporate America. You know: “Management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, so many people are no longer viable members of the workforce,” Carlin’s take on “fired” or “laid off.”*
The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) on March 24 sent a letter to Surface Transportation Board Chairman Marty Oberman complaining, on behalf of its members, about what it calls “a network problem affecting entire regions of the country.”
The National Mediation Board (NMB) has refused a request from the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Mechanical Division (SMART-MD) and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division/IBT (BMWED) to be relieved from mediation with the National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC).
