Okay. Good morning. Welcome back. Brian Ossenbeck again from JPMorgan, I cover the transports. Very happy to keep rolling here with Canadian National. Today on stage, we have Ghislain Houle, the CFO, and Janet Drysdale, who's now the SVP and Chief Stakeholder Relations Officer. Congrats, Janet, on that new role. I'm gonna turn it over to Ghislain Houle to make some introductory comments. He's got a few slides up here, we'll come back for Q&A. Ghislain Houle, thanks for being here, please take it away.
Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having us. I like you so much that I cut my vacation. Doug MacDonald was supposed to do this conference. He had a little bit of an issue, but nothing serious, and he's doing very well, so I'm happy to report that. I'm happy to see you have a hard time pronouncing Janet's new title and you're English, imagine I'm French. Chief...
Stakeholder Relations.
Stakeholder Relations Officer. It's a mouthful for a French person, but congratulations, Janet.
Thank you.
We've worked very well together for a long time, and I'm very happy, and it's a well-deserved promotion. Maybe just a couple of opening remarks to set the table. First of all, I wanna thank people in the room. I wanna thank people on webcast listening and taking interest in our company. Just to give you and set the table here a little bit, first of all, we're starting the year quite strong, Brian. When you look at our volumes, and as you know, we do report volumes on a weekly basis, in terms of RTMs, our volumes are up 10%. Now when you remember last year, you know, it was a very tough winter. When you look at January and February, 85% of those days actually had a restriction on our trains due to weather.
This year it's about 40%. We have easier comps. You know, I mean, what's in the bank is in the bank. When I look at the various segments, what really continues to show strength is really the bulk segment. It's, it's grain, it's coal, West Coast, it's frac sand and automotive, which is not in the bulk. Automotive, I think, Janet, our volume's quarter to date, I think they're up over 10%. Automotive continues to show some strength. When you look at segments that continue to show weakness, it's more related to the consumer products segments like intermodal, international. Look at, you know, lumber. When you look at the housing starts, it's down.
When you look at the housing permits in the U.S., I think it's down, like, 25%. Lumber is shows weakness, refined petroleum products and chemicals and plastics. When you look at a macroeconomic standpoint, again, consensus came out a few weeks ago, industrial production in the U.S. continues to weaken. I think we're close to 1.5% in terms of decline on a year-over-year basis. Obviously, the environment continues to be quite volatile, continues to be quite difficult to read. When you look at interest rates, it looks like we're still calling for a mild recession at CN, we don't really know. It looks like it takes time for the rising interest rates to feed itself into the system and combat inflation.
We'll have to see, and it looks like recession, if there is one, could be pushed more towards the back end of the year versus the front end of the year. We'll see. We have good visibility on some commodities, like grain, for example. In the first half of the year, we've got good visibility, but obviously, the visibility gets quite murky in the second half of the year. You know, Canadian grain is a good example. We don't know what type of crop we'll get. We had a strong one this year that we're currently moving. We'll see what we get for the second half of the year. At this point, we're assuming a three-year average on Canadian grain in the second half of the year.
Talking about operations, I'm very pleased to report that the network is very fluid, that, you know, we run that railroad extremely well. I'll give you a few stats. When you look at our car velocity, we're at 210 plus car miles per day. That's up 35% versus last year. The key thing that I look for is really telling is the fact that, as I said, we've moved 10% more volume, but with 15,000 less cars on the network. That's really the value of scheduled railroading. When we say that scheduled railroading provides capacity, it actually allows you to move more volume with less cars and therefore improve on customer service and improve on our reliability. When you look at our origin train performance, we're at 85% versus around 55-60, Janet, I think last year. Our 32-hour car dwell is down by 65%. All of this is extremely good, but we have only 2 and a half months behind us, so I don't wanna count our chickens.
Too quickly. As I said, we'll see what the second half of the year provides. On the labor front, I think it's important to mention we are in active negotiations with Unifor. Unifor is a union that represent intermodal, automotive, mechanical, and clerical employees. We hope to have a negotiated settlement. We're actually talking to them as we speak. They did receive a strike vote from their membership, and there could be a labor stoppage or labor action as early as next Tuesday, Janet, March 21st. Hopefully, that won't happen. We intend to use management employees to continue to perform key activities. For example, we will continue to serve our Canadian ports, Rupert, Vancouver, and Halifax.
We will continue to serve some of our key intermodal inland terminals, and I'll name them. Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. Those that we will not serve, Prince George, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Moncton, we've already started ramping down some of the key activities on those terminals in light of what may happen. I'm hopeful and crossing my fingers that we will get to a negotiated agreement. Maybe I'll finish on this and then turn it over quickly to Janet. From a long-term standpoint, I think that the stars are aligning at CN. I think that under Tracy's leadership, I'm very, very pleased to see what's happening. I think the team is gelling. Very happy to have Ed back. I've known Ed for 20 years or so.
Doug and I have known each other for over 25 years. As you can see, Janet and I have worked very, very closely together. Janet used to be our VP Finance, so she's good with numbers. I'm very pleased with that. I think that, at CN, we have some specific CN growth opportunities that are lining up in front of us that we will walk you through at Investor Day, that I know you're participating, Brian. That's scheduled to be on May second and May third. Hopefully, you know, investors will participate in big numbers on that conference. We're looking forward to it. Also, we're looking forward to show some of the next generation of railroaders at CN during those two days. Maybe on this, I'll turn it over to you, Janet, for a few remarks.
Sure. Thanks, Ghislain. I couldn't be more pleased to be here today. I feel very privileged to be taking on a new role, one which includes investor relations and the opportunity to once again engage with the investment community. Maybe I can provide a few highlights on some of our key sustainability initiatives. We had a very strong performance last year, delivering an almost 2% year-over-year improvement in fuel and carbon efficiency. This is really an outstanding result, and I want to clearly point out that this relates directly to the disciplined adherence to our scheduled operating plan. When we run the plan, we stop stopping trains, and that improves the fluidity of the network, it improves customer service, and it improves fuel and carbon efficiency.
To me, this is a really great proof point of how sustainability and the business itself, you know, go hand in hand. We talked a little bit about safety. We had a very strong performance last year in terms of our personal injury performance. It was an all-time record for CN. We, you know, did well so far this year, I would say, both in injuries and accidents, but again, we're only two months in, but we certainly are pleased with the way that that is trending. In terms of our DE&I agenda, we made significant progress. We now have a board that has gender parity. At the executive management level, we increased our representation of women around the table from about 18%, to nearly 30%. Really making tremendous strides on those aspects. I think, you know, we're very, very pleased about, you know, the way the team is gelling, as Ghislain mentioned, and the way that the proof points are being delivered as it relates to the scheduled railroading operation, which really, at the end of the day, is all about delivering a better service to our customers.
Thank you very much for the comments there. Yeah, please give Doug our best. Sounds like we'll see him again and hear from him on the earnings call before too long.
No, absolutely.
So-
He's doing well.
Give him a break from all the questions. Thank you again for stepping in. Just to, you know, talk more about what's been on in the news and everybody's minds, in the industry from a safety perspective. There's been a number of advisories published. Obviously, this is in the U.S. You operate in both countries. You know, but it's hard to ignore. We've seen announcements from the AAR in terms of what they're doing, industry-wide, you know, and what they're proposing, you know, for some of these actions that we've seen from hotbox detectors and the like. Maybe you can just give us set the stage in terms of how you view the network or any things that you might be changing or looking at internally based on what we've learned, knowing that there's still, you know, more discussion and discovery to happen.
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, safety is on a lot of people's mind. We are actively participating with the AAR on all the initiatives that's going on as we speak. I think safety, at the end of the day, is the industry's social license to operate. I think that it's important that you continue to improve in safety. I think that, you know, statistics that have been given by the AAR, I mean, since 2000, I think that from a safety standpoint, the industry has improved, but we're clearly not 100% to where we need to be. When you look at the accidents, since 2000, they're down by 30%. If you focus more on the mainline accidents, they're down by 45%.
There has been some improvement, but there needs to continue. Frankly, my view is how to continue to improve is really three things: continue the deployment of technology, I think it's about process, and it's about behavior. I'll give a few examples. We've talked a lot at CN about our automated track inspection cars. This is to bring a car on the main line and, you know, inspect the track with technology, with lasers and the likes. It allows you to have a data-driven inspection that now focuses on better preventive maintenance, and if you have better preventive maintenance, you have better safety. Same thing related to our portals. We've talked a lot about these portals. Today, for example, we have to do, by regulation, a certified car inspection.
where we have a train in a key terminal, and a mechanical person actually physically has to walk the train and gets on their knees and tries to look under the car and so on and so forth to be able to see potential defects. Well, now with the portals, and I think 7 we have 7 of those, Janet. The train goes through the portal. The portal is equipped with high-resolution cameras supported by algorithms that will be able to detect defects or potential defects that the human eye cannot detect. Again, that brings, you know, the fact that now it's a data-oriented inspection and therefore better preventive maintenance and there are better better safety. Detectors, I know there's been a lot of discussion about detectors. We have lots of different detectors on our track. We have hot bearing detectors, hot wheel detectors. We have dragging equipment detectors. I've ridden trains. I'm a locomotive engineer, and I can tell you these detectors work. It happened to me where we had a dragging equipment.
on one of my trains. I had to go and fix before the train could continue to move. Again, that technology on the detectors needs to continue because they instruct the crew that a potential defect could be there, and something needs to happen before that defect creates an accident. From a process and behavior standpoint, I think CN has put a lot of effort in, you know, pushing safety culture in the last few years and really making, like, safety is uncompromisable. Safety has to be first and foremost. I'm happy, and I'm knocking on wood to report that we have been 800 days without a fatality at CN and 610 days without a serious injury. I think the industry needs to collaborate on this because it's an industry issue. We need to continue to work with the regulator on this. Again, safety is, as I said, and I'll close on this, it's our social license to operate. I don't know whether, Janet, you wanna add anything.
Maybe just, you know, the real fundamental importance of safety culture and the work that we've been doing around that to really migrate from a compliance-driven culture to a values-based culture, where employee behavior is related to doing the right thing, not, you know, worrying about a demerit point. You know, worrying about themselves and their colleagues. The other exciting news we have on the safety front is actually we're in the midst of deploying our own new technology, leveraging handheld devices, where employees will have the capability to report exposures in the field. That information gets transmitted in real time. Just like I mentioned that we will be reporting in the Confidential Close Call Reporting System, but this system internal to CN really is gonna give us those exposures in real time so that we can take immediate corrective action.
Maybe just one more quick one on the hot box detectors because they're such a focal point at this stage. In Canada, I think they're regulated a little bit differently from the US. Is there any split between the two in terms of how you put them in place or how they're regulated or not? Is there any sort of, you know, could it be a worthwhile investment, was there any sort of capital expenditure you would think to, you know, meet some of these new suggestions from the industry?
I think we've been deploying this kind of detection technology for many, many years. We're, you know, certainly interested in complying with the regulation, but we go well beyond the regulation. When we assess the network, this is on a risk-based approach, and it obviously correlates to the traffic flows that we have. That is what informs us about, you know, where these technologies should be placed. We've seen the emergence of technologies. As Ghislain mentioned, we have the, you know, hotbox, hot wheel detectors. You know, the newer technology, the Acoustic Bearing Detectors, this is something that we've deployed, and we will continue to deploy these across the network. We have-
We're actually in the market, I think other railroads are in the market as well to get more of these Acoustic Bearing Detectors and put more of them on our network. We have some of them now, and that's the newer technology. That's the point I'm making about technology is not just about productivity. Technology, in our view at CN, is first and foremost about safety. The productivity and the economic benefits is a side value of it, really it's about safety.
The density of our detectors is about every 10-15 miles.
Yeah, 10-15.
We're I think,
That's well within-
Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly.
The suggested. We'll see if it gets further regulated. Gjislain 1 thing that I think most people would agree is you usually set some conservative financial targets to begin the year and then usually tell us they're conservative, and then we wonder how conservative. I don't know, maybe in this case, there's clearly a lot going on and even since we last spoke on the earnings call. It does feel like maybe there's not as much conservatism in there as there has been in the past. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts. You've got fuel, inflation, accessorials. We talked last time about the additional sick pay and the headwind from that. Maybe we can just revisit that and go through some of those moving parts. You gave.
Yeah.
Outline of where you're more confident, not based on end markets, but what else should we be thinking about?
Yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, hopefully our guidance has been conservative. I think, you know, I don't know, to your point, it's tough to call. I think that, you know, we have some headwinds as we alluded to during our call, our earnings call in terms of headwinds, in terms of new Work/Rest Rules in Canada and in terms of paid sick days, and we've totaled that to about CAD 100 million. We're still looking to industrial production to be negative. As I said, we're calling for a mild recession. You can't really call for a mild recession and then call for double-digit EPS growth.
I think the math, my 14-year-old son came with me, and he thought it was pretty cool to go from Florida to come to this conference, he would tell me that that math doesn't work. Like I said, we've got good visibility on the first half of the year. The second half is a bit murky. Tough to call the economy because there's different factors. I mean, you saw yesterday, again, Meta, let go of another 10,000 people. Unemployment is still quite tight at 4% or 5% in the US, and Canada, a little bit higher than that. Interest rates are continuing to rise, but people continue to buy. It looks like it'll take time.
Like, people that have mortgages, for example, you know, some of them I was talking to, they were saying, "Well, I'm okay because my mortgage only expires in 2 years." They continue to buy. They're not being hit, but they will eventually get hit. I think the interest rates and the rising of interest rate, it's taking time to get its toll on inflation. You know, we're calling for volumes to be slightly better than industrial production, which is negative at 1.5%. There is a lot of moving parts to your point. You know, if volumes do better, we will do better. If volumes do worse, we're very well-positioned to go through whatever the economy will give us at CN. We've got the strongest balance sheet in the industry. We've got a good game plan.
Our operations are humming, you know. Like I said, we've started the year quite strong. Again, that's in light of the fact that, you know, we had easier comps, and the market assumes that we will have a very good Q1. I think when I look at consensus forecast, I think that the market expects CN to have EPS growth of 27%. We'll see, but as you know, Brian, when we get to the earnings call after Q1, we typically give a little bit of visibility on guidance at every earnings call. Stay tuned on that one. At this point, it's, you know, we're still assuming that we'll have a low, single-digit EPS growth for the year.
Okay. In terms of the offsets for the paid sick days and the Work/Rest Rules, I think that was a larger number than I would expected, in terms of the $100 million. It seems like that's the worst-case scenario, Ed on the call talked about how you might be working against that. It's been a little while now. Has that gone, you know, sort of according to plan? Have you been able to find the offsets and work through kind of the nuances of this, of the new regulation, I guess on top of that, the different work rules?
We're working on it big time. I think the two components, just to make sure that people understand. The new Work/Rest Rules, therefore, would force us to have more employees to move the same amount of volume because people need to take more rest. That's one piece of the equation. The paid sick days, and it's called paid sick days for a reason. People typically used to call in sick when you're sick, but in the past, we would not pay for those. Now we pay, that's a pure cost. Our best estimate when we started the year was CAD 100 million on those two things.
I think that to your point, we're working very hard with Ed, but also with Derek Taylor and with Pat Whitehead, you know, to try to offset some of those through productivity, through scheduling, through a lot of different initiatives. I'm pushing them. It's early on, so stay tuned on that one. We're trying to offset some of this. Obviously, I don't think we'll be able to offset the entire amount. $100 million is a big number, but we're working hard. We're not just sitting on our laurels and say, "Well, we're gonna get hit, and we're not gonna do anything about it." We're pushing the team to try to reduce that impact.
If there's any questions in the audience, raise your hand. We'll get you a microphone. I imagine one that would someone would probably ask is, if I've snuck a look at my phone and got it correct, the STB just approved CPKC. I don't know what conditions there would be. That's always the devil in the details. Probably not a surprise, in terms of what you would have expected, at least one of the possible outcomes. You know, again, we'll see what the concessions are and everything else related to that. Just from a initial reaction perspective, I mean, I think even on last call you mentioned you're making some changes based on what could potentially happen. What's your view is assuming that goes forward, you know, what are some of the areas that you're now gonna focus more on?
Yeah.
With that seemingly being, you know, the reality, again, waiting to see what the actual carve-outs or concessions might be.
Jen can jump in. I can start here. First of all, I wanna congratulate Keith and the team to get the approval. Congratulations. You know, for us, I think that first of all, you know, we're very focused on our network. We have a great network, 3 coast network that we're focused on. I think that, you know, we're not overly concerned about this transaction. I think that, you know, we haven't really we were not a big interline partner with KCS- In the first place. When we, when this transaction was moving forward or before it started moving forward, we protected some of the business that was competitive with. Frankly, we're focused on our network. We're very pleased to be part of the EMP program with our partners, UP and NS. I think that this is starting to get traction.
We're starting to actually move truck traffic that actually comes from Mexico, going to Chicago, interchange with us, and then going to Detroit, Michigan, Toronto, Montreal. We're happy with a partner at UP to have access to Mexico. I think that this is good news for us. You know, I think that, to your point, we don't know what conditions. I mean, you just brought it up. I was expecting that this was gonna come up this morning. We'll review the result. If there's anything we need to do from a CN standpoint, we will. Again, I wanna congratulate our Canadian competitor for this approval. Janet, anything-
I would just add that we feel very good about the pipeline of growth opportunities that we have, which we will be discussing in more detail at the Investor Day in May. Among those, it does include, you know, some gains from truck to rail conversion. The key there is really the reliability of service and the ease of doing business. I think across the board in the rail industry, you know, we've struggled with meaningful conversion because of those two factors. The progress we've been making on the scheduled railroading and the reliability improvement and the capacity and fluidity improvements that it's giving us are really important. We've also been really digging into technology support in the context of how we interface with our customers and making really good strides in terms of ease of doing business. We think that this work that's already well underway will support us in those efforts for modal conversion. Again, that's just one of various growth opportunities that we have, leveraging the strength of the diversified franchise that we have, and more to come on that in May.
Okay. I do wanna ask a couple questions on that, but just to come back to, where you were saying just saying about the Unifor contract negotiation. There's some areas you can protect and some that sounds like you can't. Is that expected to be, you know, a headwind that we're gonna see in numbers? It sounded like you got most of the major ports covered, but maybe it's a little bit early to tell, and of course, it could still come and be resolved. If it doesn't, is that something that you think you'll see, you know, show up as a bit of a headwind until it does get resolved?
Like it could. I mean, it'll depend on how long it lasts.
Okay.
I mean, if, if hopefully, like I said, we will get a negotiated settlement before next Tuesday. If, if we don't, unfortunately, then it depends. I mean, if it's, if it's short in nature, then I think it'd be fair to say that maybe the impact will be not that big. If it lasts, you know, longer, then yes, it could be a headwind. I mean, you cannot have a major union be on strike and not have any financial impact, especially if it's for a longer time. We'll see. As I said, hopefully we'll get a negotiated settlement before next Tuesday.
I had the opportunity to hear Tracy speak at an industry conference a couple weeks ago, and she's talking about this integrated supply chain, which I think is probably a lot more important than it was. Not that it wasn't important before, but with all the congestion and issues that we've encountered as an industry. It's not necessarily new, but there's maybe more emphasis on trying to get it done. I'm assuming that's gonna be part of the Investor Day conversation. How does that, how does that take place? How do you get all those people and different stakeholders?
Yeah.
You know, to really work? When you think about industry trying to grow, that collectively hasn't really grown, a lot of it seems to come from visibility and better predictability. Again, the data, the integration. You know, again, that hasn't really come to fruition. I guess, what's gonna move it forward this time, and what are you specifically trying to do there?
I think, Janet, I'll start, and again, you can jump in on this one as well. I think it's about sharing information and sharing data. I think that, you know, the supply chain, it's named the supply chain because there are many actors, you know. We deal with shipping lines, we deal with port operators, we deal with grain elevators when you talk about grain. We deal with different players. Typically in the past, you know, when issues happen, then if you don't have the right information, then there's finger-pointing. Everybody, you know, has a tendency to point the railroads because we're a big player in the supply chain. We're big in Canada and whether it's us or whether it's not. I think what Tracy is talking about, and we've started talking about this, by the way, Brian, as you probably remember, when Claude Mongeau became CEO.
in 2010, when we said, "We need to look at the supply chain." If you remember, we implemented service level agreements with the terminals, exactly for that. I think now it's more about data interchange, moving forward on how quickly we interchange that data so that we have the right information, so that we can continue to enhance the supply chain, improve it, but also when there's an issue, that there can be some constructive discussions to resolve the issue based on facts and not just based on hearsay and not knowing exactly what's happening out there. I think we have ways to go. Like I said, it's a bit like safety. There's been improvement on the supply chain since Claude was CEO in 2010. To Tracy's point, I think we're not where we need to be. We saw the issues last year, and it got into congestions in some of the inland terminals that we had to live with last year. I think it's about data interchange, and it's about enhancing those capabilities. And then being able to use it in a constructive manner to improve it. Janet.
Yeah, I think, you know, supply chain is only as good as its weakest link, and the perennial challenge in railroading is the ability to really align supply and demand, in as much as real-time as possible. When you realize, you know, the long lead times that railroads have in terms of adding crews, cars or even locomotives, the ability to have more information sharing with customers is critically important. The more we can understand how their business is evolving, what their future demand looks like, the better we are at enabling that demand. I think the approach that we've had in terms of working in an integrated fashion within the organization is a foundational step in then being able to go out into the broader ecosystem and work in a more integrated fashion across the supply chain, leveraging data sharing and, you know, just really embracing how we all work together.
On the screen here, we have the three coast rail map.
Beautiful, isn't it?
It never gets old.
Red.
The, I think we've talked about this in the past, but, you know, the Northeast and the South, you know, I guess we refer to them as the anemic arms. You know, clearly the other ones are very strong. So you wanna balance that out a bit. You know, it's probably gonna again come up at the Investor Day, but, I mean, there's only probably so much you can do to, you know, get traffic to want to show up there. It's gonna go where it's gonna go. How do you think about balancing out the rest of those areas? Is that more investment? Is it more partnership with Halifax and other things? It seems like it does take a bit of time, you know, to really fill out those other corridors and, you know, make that map look even better.
I think obviously, absolutely. I think that we do have capacity in Eastern Canada, going to the South. You're right, we will highlight some of the key projects that are CN specific, that are over and above the economy, that will, you know, get on that territory, and we will highlight that during our Investor Day. I think, you know, Doug and the team is pushing hard on filling up that space. I think I'm very pleased to report that Halifax is working very, very well. If you remember, they used to be owned by Macquarie, financial institution. Didn't operate the terminal exactly the way that it needed to be operated. Now with Singapore.
PSA.
PSA, one of the best terminal operators in the world, I think that we can see Halifax growing. It'll take some time. I mean, it took some time to grow Rupert. In fact, I think at one point we grew Rupert probably faster than we would like. It's gonna take some time, but it is growing. Right now, Halifax is running just 50%-60% of its capacity. It bought the other terminal, it's got like 1.2 million-1.3 million TEU capacity. This again is to take market share away from the ports of New Jersey and New York to bring it to Halifax. We've got the best transit time from Halifax going to Toronto, then Detroit, Chicago, than our Canadian competitor, by quite a bit.
we are gonna be very aggressive in growing that piece of our business because we can grow with very little CapEx, if zero CapEx. On the Western front, where you see the very thick line, 'cause that's density. we will be very intentional about how we sell this, because as you know, Brian, and as I just said, I think if anything, we've grown our business in Western Canada probably a little faster than we would have liked. When you look at the last few years, we had the largest top line growth of the industry, but we couldn't bring that top line to the bottom line because we took on too much and we grew over our capacity, and therefore our cost just went naturally up.
We are selling to our capacity in Western Canada. We are gonna continue to invest in sidings, year in, year out, like even this year with a potential recession. We have a plan to put some sidings and double track in Western Canada. The way we do this is through a lens of capital efficiency. We know that if you try to build too much in one given year, because remember that some of these territories, the construction period could be just a couple of months if you don't wanna build it under snow. We are focused on capital efficiency, making sure that the engineering team has got the work blocks that, you know, we don't pay undue overtime because they're paid a time and a half, that we're not paying premium to contractors.
We do that capacity year in, year out with a view of capital efficiency. What we do is we sell to that capacity. You may see us grow a little less in Western Canada than we've done in the past, but more of it will fall to the bottom line. That's the key here. Like we saw in 2022, if demand is more than supply, then we use this as a tool to get better pricing because that business needs to earn the right to go on our precious network. Quite aggressive on bringing volumes on Eastern Canada to South. Very intentional on how we bring volume to the West with a view of selling to our capacity. I think that's the proof of the pudding. To your point, there are some very exciting specific growth projects we have, oriented towards Eastern Canada. We have some in Western Canada as well, that we will walk you through at Investor Day, and we're looking forward to it. Janet, anything?
No, you covered it well.
Once I did.
Just ask one more quick one for Janet, and then I'll turn it back to you, Ghislain, to wrap things up. On the ESG front, obviously there's more and more focus. It doesn't feel like it's going away. From a business perspective, commercial decisions, are those being made, you know, with ESG at the forefront as a component? Like, or is it just nice to have? You know, it's kind of, I guess, asking for the tipping point when you see that be more of, you know, at the table as opposed to, well, this is just something we wanna focus on, we need it, but it's not really driving, you know, the economics. I imagine a lot of that ties back to service and, you can't really get away from that. Where, where are those conversations at this point, maybe relative to where they were a couple years ago?
They've ramped up tremendously, I would say, especially over the past 18 months or so. Customers now, you know, they expect price, and they expect service, but they also wanna understand their own footprint. Many of our customers, you know, have climate targets as well, so they're looking through their supply chain to see how they can reduce their emissions. The greatest source of our customers' emissions is actually the transportation supply chain. It does matter. You know, CN is proud of its track record in this regard. We are about 15% more fuel efficient, so more carbon efficient, in terms of our locomotive performance than the industry average. We know that we do very, very well as an industry.
If we can convert more long-haul trucking to rail, we have the potential to reduce GHG emissions by up to 75%. That's a tremendous value that we can provide to our customers. We are getting more and more requests for detailed carbon calculations. We're getting more requests in terms of customers that are in the process of making decisions about where to locate or how to establish supply chains and how the GHG impacts may be related to where they put their facilities and what mode of transportation they use. We see it absolutely ramping up, but we're in a great position in terms of being a more fuel and carbon efficient industry as a whole. Amongst that industry, I think CN is in a great position in terms of the performance that we've established in this area.
Maybe some closing comments. We have a minute left. Listen, I'm extremely excited to be at CN. I've been there for 25 years, so gotta be excited. Although I've seen different CEOs. I'm very excited to work with Tracy. Some of you will meet her. I think that, you know, CN looks very bright under her leadership. Very excited to go back to scheduled railroading with a focus on car velocity. As I said, our car velocity quarter to date is, you know, summer-like. As we get into the work season, and the maintenance season and work block, you know, maybe the improvement of car velocity will slow down a little bit, because people, the engineering forces need to get their work blocks.
You know, what the team is producing is phenomenal, and I've seen it years ago. Unfortunately, we lost it a little bit, but we're back to it. You can see people have smiles on their face, and people are proud to be at CN, and I think that we have a great network. You know, we love it, and this is what we sell. Our customer service is as good as it's ever been in the past, and that's what it's all about. It's about customer service, and it's about continuing to really focus and have part of our DNA as safety, as your question alluded to, Brian. Thanks for taking interest in CN. Hopefully, we'll see you at Investor Day on May second and May third. If not by physically, you'll listen to webcast, hopefully. It's gonna be exciting, two days. Thank you, and, have a safe day.
All right. Thanks, Ghislain. We'll have to end it there, we will see you in May in Chicago.
Perfect.
Thanks a lot for being here.
Thank you.