Great, everybody. Thank you once again for joining us for our 31st annual BofA Transportation Airline Industrials Conference. I'm Ken Hoexter, BofA's air freight and surface transportation and marine shipping analyst. So to open our conference, we welcome CSX and Kevin Boone, EVP of Sales and Marketing, a position he has held at CSX since June 2021, starting at CSX back in 2017. Also in the audience here from CSX, we've got Arthur Adams, SVP of Sales and Marketing, and Matthew Korn, Investor Relations. So we welcome Kevin to our conference for the fourth time in the past five years, CSX for its 16th consecutive year, and 21st time in the 23 years we've hosted the conference. So truly, thanks to CSX for the steadfast commitment to the conference.
CSX is one of our top rail-focused stocks given its sustained operating performance, built-in capacity for growth, and solid operational execution. So, one quick one, just as it's our first time seeing Kevin live, so knowing how much Jim Foote meant to the team, I just wanna send our condolences, you know, on his recent passing. He was a great contributor to the conference over the years, as well, and always great for in-depth rail discussions. So we've got a lot to cover in the next 35 minutes, so let me turn it over to you, Kevin. I know you've got a few thoughts, update on service levels, and maybe just, as we wrap up, I'm gonna come sit next to you.
But what, what are your key messages as we're more than halfway through the second quarter, and what three key takeaways should we leave with today?
Yeah, sure. First, great to be here. I guess I didn't realize it was 4 out of the last 5 I presented at. Last year was one I didn't present at. Thank you for your comments on Jim. Obviously, I learned a tremendous amount from him in my time working directly for him, so that was a sad loss for us all. Matthew joining us today, he actually just added strategy as well, so he didn't cover that. But we're very excited to work with him on the executive team, on the strategy side, and a lot to be done there and a lot to think about. And then Arthur, he's very important to us on the merchandise side in our franchise there.
Carload conversion, a lot of truck conversion, a lot of success we're having, even in this, quite frankly, a very, very difficult truck market right now. The wind's not at our back, unfortunately, but I gotta say, there's a number of wins we've had, just in the last few weeks where we've been able to identify and really target truck-competitive lanes and go after it. Some of those, with our Western partners, so that's pretty exciting, as well. So a lot of activity. I think it sets us up well when, I, you know, maybe you're calling the bottom here on the trucking market. Hopefully, that is the case. I don't think, when we came into the year that we thought we'd see, the trucking market maybe as down as it is, the last couple of months, so.
But, you know, like anything, it's cyclical, and it'll come back, and we see some opportunity as that, as that, improves. In terms of what we're seeing out there, a lot of mixed, mixed signals. We've had a lot of success, as I mentioned, controlling what we can control, going after volume that hasn't traditionally moved on the, on the rails or moved away from the rails for a period of time and working with our customers. I think we're earning that opportunity to have those discussions after our performance on the, on the service side. And a number of whiteboarding sessions with our customers is really where they're handing over their truck file for the first time and really opening up to us and sharing what opportunities may exist over time.
When you look at a procurement person sitting at one of our companies today, you know, they have the easy win, which is they keep and remain on truck, and they get maybe a 10%-20% reduction in the rate. So that's a challenge. We still can offer value, but in the do-nothing scenario, when they can still deliver value to their companies, it makes those conversations sometimes a little more challenging than they, than they should be. But we are seeing a lot of traction. As Arthur will remind me, time and time again, our average opportunity on even on the merchandise side is about $2 million. So it takes a lot of wins. There's a lot of positives in that. We're a very diversified portfolio, so there's not one single customer that really, you know, can hurt us necessarily, but it takes a lot of process.
It takes a lot of the team working together to really build on that momentum. We quite frankly have a lot of momentum. Our pipeline is up tremendously year-over-year. Those retranslate and we'll get into probably the industrial development side that, you've seen there. I got a partner in Mike, you know, look, he's an asset to walk into any customer, and he's a great listener. He understands the business. He's been doing it over 40 years. He doesn't like me saying it for decades, but he's been doing it a long time, and I can learn a lot from that. I'm excited to work with him. He's hitting his stride. We meet every Monday as a leadership team.
You know, he comes in there, and, you know, even this Monday, this past Monday, more and more opportunities he's, he's seeing across the network, whether it's out-of-route miles, better utilization of some of our, terminals, that he's really digging into. He's out actually out on the railroad today. I think he left at 8:00 A.M., 8:00 A.M. this morning for another, trip with the team going around up the 95 corridor through our coal, territory and back over across. So every time they're going out on the network, he's finding just opportunity after opportunity to really improve, the operations out there. So I'm excited about that. The team is working side by side with him. We spend a lot of customer, time. We've, the whole Joe, Mike, and myself have spent a lot of time with customers here recently.
It's a heavy customer season for in terms of events and things like that, and the overwhelming feedback has been positive. Within our group, we have the customer service group and Shannon and her team. You know, those inbound complaints, those inbound tickets are down quite a bit year-over-year, and so we continue to monitor that. Our ability to react when customers have issues has never been better. So pretty excited about where we are. You know, it'd be nice to have a little bit of a wind at our back at some of these markets, but we're making our own opportunities.
Let's dig into that wind at the back, so I guess part of volumes, right? So you target low to mid-single-digit volume growth and revenue growth, so suggesting kind of flattish yields. Anything gives you the thoughts on what gets the upper end and lower end in this kind of market?
Yeah, I think, well, one of the biggest factors between our carload growth and revenue growth this year is certainly the fuel surcharge, right? And so we can't really move the diesel price. It's, you know, been stable, but it was, you know, obviously, in the first quarter, a 3-4-point headwind, when you think about our RPU, whether it was merchandise or intermodal. So that was a big headwind. That'll start to moderate at current price levels, and we'll see where things play out through the summer, but that's a big factor. Export coal, you know, our favorite topic, particularly with Baltimore, here is obviously we saw some tremendous price last year, and the export market was very supportive. It still remains very, very supportive at these levels, just not as high as they were last year.
So that's a year-over-year headwind from an RPU perspective that we'll, we'll face, and we'll see how that plays out. We took a conservative approach coming into the year, how we were thinking about where prices would ultimately land 'cause it's hard to predict. But there's a lot of things on the export market that I think are gonna make it different going forward. You don't see the capacity coming in the market when prices are really high anymore. So the supply reaction is not as, as extreme from other markets, including Australia, so that has put the U.S. in a very, very good position to compete longer term, which is positive. We have some strategic assets in alignment with some strategic customers where I think we're well-positioned on the export side. So all of that is, a positive for us.
I think clearly, from a revenue growth perspective, the merchandise, some of these markets that, you know, are bouncing along the bottom, having some cyclical upside into the back half of the year would be supportive. We certainly have easier comps, comparisons, 'cause we saw a lot of weakness, starting last year, in the late second quarter, in the third and fourth quarter. So we'll be lapping that, which is helpful. And then, you know, if this truck market starts to recover, and I think everybody's predicting I've seen predictions as from, you know, late third quarter to first quarter of next year. And, you know, who knows when that comes back, but that it will certainly help on a pricing level and on our domestic side and other things. So a lot of moving parts.
Chemical business still remains very healthy for us after a tough year last year. So, you know, you would typically see some of these markets moving in the same direction, but in many markets, they're moving in inverse direction, so there's not clear visibility of how things are moving. But, the team has to work with what we have right now and really driving our own opportunities.
Wonderful. So let's dig into some of those commodities just for a second more, right? So volumes are trending up about 0.5% quarter to date, positive for the second straight quarter. Yet, as you mentioned, kind of comps start to get easier. So anything particularly you'd call out? I know you just talked about coal. It was down 7%. How about intermodal? You wanna throw out thoughts on intermodal or anything else that?
Yeah, I think coal certainly, when you look at first quarter versus second quarter, is the big one on with the Baltimore outage. And, you know, I think we came up with solutions very, very quickly to, for diversion opportunities. Those probably weren't, you know, in April. They didn't go as well as we would have hoped. You know, some terminal capacity there and other things didn't work. We, you know, we're just a piece of that supply chain. I would say the ag side, we expect that to improve through the back half of the year. That's been a headwind with some transitory headwinds, whether it's a strong southeastern crop or the Brazilian crop. We think those were normalized, which will create opportunities for us. The team's doing a great job of chasing those opportunities.
So that market is another one where and then the fertilizer side, a lot of volume. When you think about the short haul, if you look at our first quarter performance, revenue was up mid-single digits. Our volumes were down, low single digits. And that's because we're doing very, very well in the long haul, high RPU business. The short haul business in Florida has really struggled for us. So it's a lot of volume, not as much revenue there, and we expect that to turn back on here in a few weeks. So that'll be helpful to the volume side of our business.
So you mentioned the coal, first of all, down 7%. We were actually looking for down 14%, so I know it's ugly, but it's certainly doing better than we had.
Yeah.
So the rerouting around Port of Baltimore, can you talk about that for a minute post the Key Bridge collapse? What went into rerouting the network so efficiently, or has it been efficient, or?
I think the team has done an amazing job. And one, you know, Mike and the team working with Joe, from our sales and marketing team on the coal side and understanding the issues, understanding, you know, where we have outlets for that supply, was key. And we all got together in the first week right after it happened, and said, "What are the options for us?" and working with the customers. I will say, you know, the other thing that we saw is an opportunity where we needed some workers to temporarily transfer to some of our conductors and engineers. We put a call out to them, and we had overwhelming demand for people to move on a temporary basis to help us move that coal.
So that's something I think, you know, you've heard Joe talk about, the culture improvements engaging with our workforce. I think that's evidence of that. You know, they were there. I would say traditionally, when we asked for temporary transfers, we haven't had as much engagement. So the engagement went up tremendously, and we were able to react very, very quickly. I mentioned before, you know, on the terminal side, probably a little bit more struggles than what we had anticipated, so probably didn't hit that upside number that we were hoping for in April, but to your point, we did a pretty good job.
Yeah. So sticking with short term for a minute here. So the operating ratio outperformed normal historical moves for a sequential decline in the first quarter. The last five years, you've averaged between the first quarter and second quarter about 180 basis points improvement. Thoughts on that, maybe potential for improvement given the outsized first quarter seasonal shift? What should that mean for normality in 2Q here?
Yeah, I, you know, I don't think anything's changed when you look at our business. You know, the tail quarters, the first quarter and fourth quarter, maybe for a little bit different reasons. Fourth quarter, a lot of holidays in the fourth quarter. In the first quarter, a lot of weather, winter weather you're facing that it adds additional cost. We'll always traditionally, with all things equal, be your lower margin quarters, and then second and third quarter, you'll see improvement. And I don't think you'll see any change in that, as far as what we see today. Export coal is the one probably variable that is kind of out of size of that. Obviously, that's a good business for us.
We won't see as much opportunity in the second quarter as we did in the first quarter, but I think Sean on the call, you know, said that he expects some improvement.
Yeah. Okay. So you sticking with the exact number is what?
Yeah.
All right. Talk about operations. Service has been pretty consistent. What has changed between Mike and, and Jamie in terms of how the service operates? You know, we were talking outside kinda, you know, it looks like from us on, on the metrics we see, which is velocity and dwell, that things deteriorate, but yet other rails use different metrics in terms of that's not really as important. Maybe talk about what is important for railroad in terms of determining 'cause sometimes those metrics get caught up in how fast is just one train moving, but that's not really as important as.
Yeah, you know, it was funny. Last night over a dinner, Arthur and I, and Matthew were talking about some of our business, and you think about an average chemical move, sometimes that can take, take 30 days, right? So how, how long is that move, you know, to get it to the, the customer and back? How long of that transit time really on, on the railroad, right? It's all the other things in between. It's the last mile, final mile that really creates a lot of time on the railroad. And when I came in this role a little over 2 years ago, that was where we were really, struggling is getting that switch to the customer, making sure if you told them you're gonna be there on Tuesday at noon, that you're doing it, not Thursday at noon, right?
That's where we've seen vast improvement. If you ask Shannon and, you know, Art, we've just put out a survey, and we do a survey with our customers on a quarterly basis. We've had the best scores from a service perspective that we've ever had, on that. That's because that, that last mile, final mile, service has been tremendous. We're, we're hearing it from the customers every day. Our ability to react, I will say, that's a real improvement. When we see problems, Mike and his team are able to go after them and fix them and listen to the customer and do those and really go after the systemic issues that we've traditionally had on the railroad that can be very, very frustrating for a customer.
So what I've seen from Mike is his ability to use data in a different way to really understand whether it's hiring. He's very data-driven, anticipating when we might have attrition, anticipating these things, and getting ahead of them with data, really analyzing our network from that perspective, looking at the network on a holistic basis, and really looking at feedback from a lot of our leaders within operations and where do they see the opportunities and really empowering them to go after those out-of-route miles, those things. He sees tremendous opportunities. I have to tell him it's sometimes so bad, it's good, right? There's, you know, if he came in here and there wasn't any opportunities, that would be a bad thing.
And he, it's really every meeting. It's starting to click more and more as to whether it's engineering or other things, just really finding a different way to do it with all of his 40 years plus of experience, and really starting to understand the network. Art, our network's complex, and it takes time, even for somebody that's been doing it as long as him to really be able to dig in and really, you know, unravel kind of some of the things that we've done and some of these terminals and how you can better utilize them. And we're seeing that every day. Out-of-route miles, it's huge, and eliminating train starts where it makes sense and not to the detriment of the customer experience. Everything he's doing is, he's coming to our team and saying, "Hey, how is the customer gonna feel about this?
Is it gonna impact the customer? In most cases, the answer's no.
So, let's go back to the revenue per car where you talked to, I think you gave a good answer in terms of the fuel, but revenue per car was up double digits for six consecutive quarters. Last four quarters, we've seen up down, up down. So no, there's a lot of mix in there, coal being a driver, fuel being a driver. Is there anything maybe you can talk to about fuel pricing underlying how that's going, and then talk about where coal contracts are being priced currently?
Yeah, I think the team, you know, when you look at a historical basis, our merchandise team is doing a great job of pricing to the value of the service. And as the service improves, we're seeing that. We're not in an environment where inflation is as high, so we don't expect our cost inflation to be as high as it has in the past couple of years. So, obviously, that will create some moderation, but from a historical basis, we're doing tremendously well. When you look at our intermodal business on the domestic side, which can be more truck competitive, certainly, there are headwinds there. Feels like we're at the bottom. You know, you see that in your data as well. So I think that's probably an opportunity for that to improve into the back half of the year. So we'll see some opportunities there.
Intermodal on the international side has been, you know, has been a nice, probably a little bit stronger than what we expected coming into the area. It has been. And, you know, that's on average, a little bit lower RPU than our, our domestic business. So that's, from a mix issue, can be a, a little bit of a headwind. And then, you know, as, as export coal pricing, bounces around quarter to quarter, that will be a, a big factor in the overall RPU for us.
All right. So inter-international intermodal being stronger, does that mean the domestic side's a little bit weaker?
Yeah, I think that's, you know, versus our plan.
Versus yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
All right. So still within, in revenues last year, you, you called for a loss of $300 million in supplemental revenues. Maybe can you tell us what's left? We're, we're seeing now about a $500 million run rate versus what was $800-$900 million prior.
Yeah, I think we've guided for the quarter for about $130 million a quarter. It did a little bit better in the first quarter. But when you look at last year, I think, second quarter last year, we're in that low $140 million range. So we'll lap that. And then as you get in the third and fourth quarter, I think we're in that $130 million-$120 million range. So certainly, we'll be done lapping, some of that storage that we saw during the pandemic and some of that, displacement there. So, largely through that at this at this point.
Wonderful. So how much capacity would you suggest is on the rail now? You used to run about 7.5 million carloads. You know, recognize that was many years ago. Here, we're looking at 63, 64 million carloads a year. You know, you've obviously gotten more efficient, so that, that would mean you could at least bring on a lot more. Maybe talk about where the network stands today in terms of capacity. You've also pulled out a lot of capacity in terms of the fleet. So add into there, where's the active local fleet?
Yeah, I think Mike, on a daily basis, reminds me that we have capacity on almost every train that's running on our network today, particularly on the merchandise side. So there's, there's a lot of opportunity to grow just on the existing trains. Merchandise or, and sorry, on the intermodal side, certainly in this market, right, where we've seen some declines on the domestic side, and some headwinds there, there's a lot of opportunity to grow the size of those trains and continue to grow into that over time. So I, you know, capacity's not an issue for us. It's not something we talk about it. We talk about it in the sense of how do we fill these trains up? And it's an opportunity from a revenue perspective and incremental margin perspective to really drive performance for us. So, you know, those are those are opportunities.
Where we see, you know, some ebbs and flows is obviously on the unit train business, whether it's grain. That's down currently, from where we would normally see it. So that will be incremental to us. But that unit train business is where, you know, you really have to plan for and have a flexible network, and that's where Mike is very, very good at. He's got a lot of experience in that and how he manages locomotives and fleet and other things and your resources to be able to handle the ebbs and flows of those markets as they come and go.
So talk about, you know, we went through a couple of years here, where the big focus was on employees and shrinking the employee base. Maybe talk about now you're at about 23,000 employees, well above your 19,000 trough back in 2020. So you're up about 20% off that base. Art, are we now properly staffed based on where we are economically? And then I'm gonna. I'll let you start with that, and then I wanna throw in kinda what happened with the last round of negotiations, right? There was a lot of stuff in terms of after we were done, we came back, we added on sick pay leave, different work rule re rest rules. So where are we now as you enter the next round of negotiations?
Yeah, I think when you comparing our absolute numbers, you gotta remember we acquired Quality Carriers and Pan Am, which is a significant headcount addition. So, we are up on a core basis, but not nearly as much as the 20% headlines that you mentioned. So I think we're in a really good place when you think about our T&E workforce right now. We were traditionally after Memorial Day, we'll see a little bit more attrition as vacations earned, other things. So in anticipation of that, we've gotten ahead of that, as we get into summer season, which, you'll have a lot more vacation, other things that pop up. So we wanna continue to have the network resilient. So we preplanned ahead of that.
So I think Sean mentioned on the earnings call, you know, expect some flat to maybe even slightly down as you see attrition, you know, play out through the back half of the year. And we're staying really close to Mike's group as we get a sense of where directionally volume could go, you know, particularly on that unit train side. We're staying close to him and making sure we're hiring ahead of those opportunities. And then on some of the contract negotiations, obviously, not as involved in that. Joe took a really lead on that, but it's a big focus on ours. And one of the biggest problems we face every day and challenges we face is just workforce reliability, right? And how do you increase, you know, people showing up to work every day? It's a seven-day-a-week job.
As Mike will remind me, on the weekends, you know, that, that is a challenge for us. How do we increase that engagement? How do we increase that trust with our workforce? So I think that's all part of it. We have seen more engagement. We have seen some benefits of that, you know, from some of those efforts. It's about listening, right? What's important to our workforce, and how do you adapt? How do we share with them what, what, what's important to our business so we can remain healthy and serve our customers? So I think that's a little bit of the back and forth. You know, we certainly led the way for the industry in that area, and I continue to expect us to lead the way in our engagement.
So I'm gonna jump around on different subjects. So given the CPKC merger, CN noted it expects more partnerships in the future, obviously, not M&A. Yet we've seen a lot, I guess, in terms of regionals. So you, how are you working with these new interline alliances, I guess? You know, CPKC, you've teamed up on the Meridian acquisition that they bought, right? And so, extending the network, talk a little bit about how that's the future of or what is the future of alliances.
Yeah, I think, when I came into this job, I thought one of the biggest opportunities was to work closer with our Class I partners. And, you know, that was a little over two years ago. We were all struggling from a service perspective and didn't have a lot of engagement, quite frankly. I would come in there and you know, excited, "Hey, we see all these opportunities to work closely together and really tackle this," you know, sometimes they call it the watershed opportunity, where us working closer with another Class I, to really go after truck business, that I saw the opportunity. We did a lot of research on it. We really looked at the data, and we know it's there. I would say in the last several months, the engagement levels from all of our Class I partners has picked up.
Our ability to really talk about these things and move quickly, more importantly, has accelerated significantly. Joe and Joe and I went around to all our Class I partners at a senior level and met with them and said, "This is a priority for us, and we would like engagement." And we've seen it. We've seen it manifest in new opportunities for us. Certainly, CP, obviously, with the Meridian Speedway is an opportunity, but there's a lot of other things we're doing with the UP, BN, and the CN. And it's working with all of them to really go after that truck business.
If we're gonna be successful, we need our partners in the west and in Canada to really help us drive that because more than half of our volume today touches another railroad, and a lot of it touches another Class I. So I'm excited at where we are versus where we were a year ago in our level of engagement. Our teams are meeting on a normal cadence, and it's becoming a priority as we all have dug ourselves out of that hiring hole and that service hole that these are the things that we're now focusing on, and then we're really leaning into it. Every Class I, we have normal cadence. Arthur with his counterpart, Maryc lare with her counterpart, they talk on a monthly basis.
That, that's great. I mean, it, it certainly seems like you're hearing from the other rails talking about it as well, about the senior level of engagement and, and how much they're focused on it. I, I guess just given the, you know, we had that Norfolk Southern's accident just over a year ago now. You talked about the growth of Quality Carriers chemical business. Maybe talk a little bit about the benefits from Pan Am and, and, and what's going on.
Yeah, we've, you know, we've gotten that railroad up to, you know, what I would say a working level now. There was a lot of work that had to be put in from an infrastructure standpoint, a lot of years of, you know, I wouldn't go as far as neglect, but it just wasn't running up to the standard that we would expect. And so we've made a lot of investments there, had a recent win by Arthur and his team, which has been tremendous. So we're starting to see some benefits coming out of there. That's a long-term opportunity to really grow that business. Waste, other markets, are really huge opportunities. When you think about pipelines, they don't go into New England, right? How do you serve, how do you serve that market better? How do you set up TRANSFLO opportunities, other things?
So we're just getting started, quite frankly, now that we have the service, and we have the ability to run more volume over that railroad. We'll, we'll really lean into it right now. So excited about that. Quality Carriers, you've heard about the ISO tanks, with the supply chain issues. It took a little bit longer to get those, unfortunately. And then when we started to get them, we saw the downturn in the chemical market. So the timing probably wasn't the best there. We have seen uptake from some of the largest, largest, chemical players in the market, which is what we really needed to start to really gain real traction. This is a market where really you see the follow-ons, right? It's very few wanna lead the way, but once they see others adopting, then others wanna try it.
And we're starting to see that cadence where we've seen month-over-month growth in that market for us. And we know where the truck volume is because Quality moves it today, and they have a very unique insight into that truck volume. So we're excited, directionally. That's going where we wanted it to. The core business has done much, much better than what we expected when we did all the financial models before the acquisition. Obviously, a truly challenging market, but that business, I can tell you, versus a lot of the trucking companies that I've seen report publicly, has held up very, very well for us.
So I'm gonna jump back to volumes. We've got a couple minutes left. So, you know, if I start thinking about, you know, your side of the house, right? So coal, benchmark price is about, what, $250 now? Yeah?
That's right.
So, your thoughts on demand, right? Is there longer upside demand on the export side? You were talking about what's going on around the world. Are we looking at holding kinda 40 million tons on export, or is there growth potential there? And then domestic, can it stay at 40, or is it, you know, are we looking at secular declines returning at a rapid pace?
Yeah, I think, I mean, the domestic market, we're not, we have our eyes wide open. I think, you know, you have challenges there. Certainly, elections matter. All those things will play into it. We have seen a number of plants get retired here on us. We don't have any in the near term doing that. But we have, you know, and we're seeing, we're hearing, more and more of these plants wanna get extended further along, you know, just from a resiliency of the grid perspective. I think that's gonna be a real issue. And I think we'll see that over the next several years pop up where the reliability of the grid has gone down because you're taking some of this capacity. What's great about coal capacity is it's very good at peaking.
When demand is very, very strong, you can really ramp up your capacity on your coal-fired plants. And so you're losing that as you take these out. And I think, you know, people are taking a step back and saying, "We have a lot of new data centers coming online. We have a lot of industrial development." And when you particularly look in the cell, I think some are getting worried about how they're gonna serve all of that new demand. And so those discussions are taking place, obviously challenging from a, you know, you have environmental standards and other things that'll be challenges to that market. But we're gonna continue to work with our customers. Our goal is to keep the ones we serve around for as long as we can and make them competitive into the market.
And so that's how we work with our customers. On the export side, I think the thesis around the export side and smart people I talk to is you're not seeing the supply response as you normally would in that market years ago. First of all, capital's limited. Banks don't like to lend for capacity additions on the coal side. So you're not seeing a lot of new production coming online, particularly in areas where you normally wouldn't see that in Australia and other areas, which you know if environmental issues and the environment's a focus in the U.S., it's really a focus in Australia. So those things I think maybe longer term reduce the volatility. And I'm no expert on coal, so coal experts in the room might disagree with me.
But I think that's where you'll see, maybe some no more normalization as the supply response is not gonna be as dramatic as you've seen in the past. And I think the U.S. has moved up in terms of our position in globally in terms of our position to be able to serve other markets like Asia.
Sticking with that and, you know, growth and outlook, you had an industrial slide. You talked about kinda 10 times the volume opportunity over some times, you know, 100 customer projects coming in line. The last 12 months, that was about $4.5 billion of partner investments. But you noted 10 times the pipeline with 500 new projects. You wanna talk about maybe three examples of something specific that we could look toward over the next year?
Yeah, there's a lot of examples. We have a new steel plant in Kentucky, great, great customer. I won't mention the customer, but that is currently ramping up for us. You have in Ohio, you have a crush plant, I think biodiesel's really, really important market going forward for us. So working with our customers there to bring on capacity, that's an exciting opportunity for us. In Indiana, a new cement plant, you know, with infrastructure builds and things like that, we're seeing a lot of demand on that side. So that's exciting. You know, even outside of Pittsburgh, you know, it's well publicized, but the Shell Monaca plant, right, has continued to ramp on us. And that's created a lot of opportunities, particularly on the export plastic side. So, it's just we're just getting started.
You know, when you think about all of the, those opportunities I just mentioned, they're just starting right now, right? It's probably a year, even two years, to really fully ramp into full capacity. So those things, they have a long, long tail to them as they start up and really the volumes build. So it's exciting. We wanted to share that slide because it's very diverse. It's across. It's not just autos, you know. I think there was a lot of thinking that it was just autos and maybe batteries. That's, you know, a relatively small portion of what we're seeing out there in terms of activity. It's not slowing down. Our team is very, very busy.
The biggest challenge for us is to find the sites and make sure we have enough of sites and supply to meet the customer's demand because they want us you know, they don't want shovels in the ground immediately. When they make a decision, they wanna put shovels in the ground. And, you know, maybe one of the benefits of the COVID experience was I think we see many of our customers, they wanna get closer to the end consumer, and we have the most valuable end consumers in the world. And we're seeing a lot of activity in the South. I just mentioned a lot of activity in the Midwest. And, we're pretty excited about it. When you think about traditionally, last you've covered this industry a long, long time. That's been a headwind for us, right? We've seen attrition.
We've seen shutdowns on our network every year that we're fighting. And I think I do think over the next few years, that actually will be a net positive rather than a, something where we're gonna have to offset.
So let me squeeze one in. I'll combine a couple questions. But I think there was some news out this morning, so I don't know if you can address it on the STB's reciprocal switching rules. I was gonna ask just generally, how does that impact the industry? I don't know if you can talk to it, Emily. And then the FRA is trying to codify two-man crews. What happens in terms of that as well? Does that get appealed, and where does that stand?
Yeah, I won't, you know, speak to specific appeals and things like that. I think, you know, when I you know, when you listen to Joe and you understand what we're trying to line around, it's, we are focused on service, and we are focused on how, you know and there's a lot of ways. Depending on the customer and their needs, it really varies, right? Some customers, they just need that empty car should to show up every day and make sure they can load it. They're less concerned about the transit time and how long it takes to get to the customer. Others are very concerned about it.
And that's where we're really focused on is what do the customers really need, and what do they need us to do to really give us more volume, to convert more volume from truck to rail or really to go after new markets for them? It's not always the same. Their needs aren't always the same. And that's where Mike and his team, the way their willingness to listen and really adapt, I think, is important going forward. And having the ability to go to market very, very quickly is gonna be important for us to be successful. So I think we're aligned on we wanted the service to get better. We're investing, whether it's technology and other things, to really increase that visibility for the customer. And we're on this path, and I think you'll see the numbers continue to improve.
So if I try and wrap up here as we run out of time, you've got a kinda really solid pipeline that you're looking to build out. You've got, you know, the Mike Cory partnership, first mile, last mile is the focus in terms of improving performance, mid-single digit volume growth. You know, we talked about some of the upside, downside potential, with coal being a tough one, but yet, and Intermodal being kinda trying to find that floor. And then margin improvement's still on track. Anything you think you'd wanna add in that we should take away here?
No, I think that's right. I think our ability to go after new opportunities has never been better. The collaboration across the teams is not about Mike and I. It's about our, our teams working effectively together. And I think you've never, we've never seen them working more closely together and going after these opportunities. So I'm excited about that. It's, I think, a lot of people are having fun doing it.
Wonderful. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us again. We always appreciate your partnership.
Yeah, thank you.