All right. Good morning. I'm Tom Wadowitz. I cover the freight transports. I was up here a lot yesterday. It's a pleasure for me to be up here again today and welcome you to the second day of our conference. We're going to kick things off. We've got a couple of the strong railroads in a row. We're going to kick off with CSX. And we have the CFO, Sean Pelkey. Sean, thank you for joining us. It's always great to see you. Always great to hear about what's happening at CSX. I know we heard a lot of great things recently at your analyst meeting. Let's see. I don't know, do you have any? I guess I can start off with some questions. And then if you have any intro thoughts you want to give, you can do that as well.
But I think, you know, typically it's always good to hear about what's kind of developing new in markets, what's looking a little bit better, what's looking a little bit worse. I think, you know, you've had some strength in certain areas, certainly some traction for a period of time on the carload side. There's some notable areas in chemicals and petroleum that continue to be good. But, you know, if you want, if you have any intro thoughts, and then in particular kicking off on the, you know, what you're seeing on the demand side and the volume side.
Thanks, Tom. And great to be here with everyone today. Yeah, for those that missed it, you know, it's probably worth sort of just mentioning about a month ago we had an investor day up in the Jacksonville area and laid out sort of what the next three years are going to look like for CSX. And, you know, there's a lot of excitement around the way that we're partnering and working with our customers differently. We feel that we've got a superior service product that is attracting their interest. We're really working hard to meet the needs of the customers in a way that we have not before. And we find that that's resonating in the way that we're able to partner with our customers to try to win some share. You know, obviously we're competing every day with the other railroads, but also from truck.
We talked about a number of different ways that we are partnering with those customers creatively to grow share. And we also talked about the amount of industrial development activity that's happening right in our service territory, which is really exciting. So, you know, that led us to some guidance that we gave, which is exciting, the kind of volume growth that we haven't seen on a sustained basis for a long time. So we can get a little into that later. But in terms of more of the near term, what we're seeing, I think it's important to remember that when we entered this quarter and exited Q3, we were in the midst of dealing with two hurricanes. So we had Hurricane Helene that came in at Q3, knocked out a big part of our Blue Ridge Subdivision. We're still working to rebuild that.
We're rerouting all the traffic around that. So that's going well. The rebuild is on pace, but it's going to take at least, you know, into likely the first half of next year to get all that done. So there's some costs and network impacts associated with that. Then we had Hurricane Milton that impacted Tampa and the Florida area at the beginning of Q4. And we talked about the combined effects of that being about $50 million in the quarter, $30 million of revenue. So I say all that to say when you're looking at our volume numbers for the quarter, you've got to remember at least October, you know, we were very heavily impacted by those storms. We started to make our way out of that. So if you look at quarter-to-date volumes, we're about flat. Still think we'll be up on a full quarter basis.
If you look at the last couple of weeks, we're up about 2%. Coal's been a bit of a drag the quarter. I would say it's been a little worse than we expected going into the quarter. We've had some outage production issues, some outages at some of the mines that we serve. So that's been a little bit of a challenge. There's been some other things that have hampered us a little bit there. But on the bright side, you mentioned chemicals. Intermodal has been actually pretty strong the last couple of weeks. We're actually seeing a seasonal inflection in domestic intermodal, which is nice. We are seeing a nice peak season here. You know, while metals all year long has been a drag, you know, Kevin talked about sort of being towards the bottom at the end of Q3.
If you look at normal seasonality in the metals market, even though metals is still down year-over-year, we're actually seasonally a little bit better than we normally would be, even with the network disruptions that we're dealing with.
Okay. So it sounds like just bear in mind, like full quarter, bear in mind, you know, October was a bit of a drag. So you'd say, you know, the kind of November, December, you expected to be up and kind of full quarter on track to be up. Sounds like broadly kind of things tracking as you expected. Is that, and then maybe even a little bit of strength in domestic intermodal? Is that fair?
Yeah, I think that's fair. And I would say probably the one area that's been a little worse than we expected is coal. Ag and food has also been off a little bit versus our expectations. So those are the two markets maybe we're a little below where we hoped, but there are some offsets.
Okay. And then in terms of some of the headwinds that you had identified when you reported 3Q, those are still reasonable ways to think about, like you mentioned, the, you know, kind of $30 million revenue impact and total $50 million from hurricanes. That's still the right way to look at it.
That's right.
What about on fuel surcharge? I mean, fuel prices bounce around. Is that kind of better or worse, or is that?
It's about the same as what we expected going into the year. So we talked about $200 million of year-over-year headwinds between export coal pricing and fuel, about $100 million operating income impact year-over-year. That's likely in the ballpark of what we're going to see there. And fuel, you know, as we go into next year, hard to predict exactly where fuel prices are going to be. But I think important to remember that prices were coming down in the first half of this year. And when that happens, we benefit from what we call positive lag because we collect on the merchandise side on a two-month lag basis. So there were some favorable impacts this year that won't repeat if fuel prices remain constant to where they are.
Primarily first half headwind, right?
Primarily first half, yeah. You know, if prices were constant to where they are today, you're looking at maybe $75 million net impact, a good chunk of that in the first half of the year.
Okay. Let's see. On the peak season commentary, so you think, I guess yesterday we had Hub Group was here and they talked about that, you know, there was strength early on and kind of some of the pull forward potentially, and then related to concern about East Coast port strike, and they had actually seen some, maybe a somewhat different group of customers that had strength later in the peak, and so that they had seen what they were characterizing as an elongated peak. Your comments sound constructive too. Is that fair that peak season seems to be playing out pretty well?
Yeah, no, I think that is fair. You know, we're up international and we're seeing, you know, subseasonal strength or super seasonal strength in domestic intermodal. Now we had some challenges in Q3 and, you know, we had the port strikes and whatnot. So the comps are a little bit difficult to kind of read through. But we're optimistic about where things are headed, and you know, last four weeks our intermodal volume's up 7%. So that's good news.
Right. Okay, great. Maybe if we go into a little bit more on some of the areas where you're seeing current strength and what's behind that and kind of how long you think that continues. So chemicals is an area, you know, you've done really well with that and that's continued to be strong. What's behind that? And is that something that, you know, as far as your visibility goes, that you think that continues into 2025?
Yeah, I mean, you know, the comps were a little easier year-over-year because last year, 2023 was a tough year for chemicals. So it's been an area of strength really across the board, plastics, LPGs, petroleum. So a lot of strength playing out within that market. And we do see that continuing. I don't think we'll see the same level of growth on a year-over-year percentage basis in 2025 as we did in 2024, but expect that to continue to be a positive market for us. Aggregates is another one that's been pretty positive all year long and, you know, very heavily impacted by the hurricane, particularly Hurricane Milton that came through the Tampa area and Florida. But we've recovered from that. We're up the last couple of weeks in aggregates and there's still a lot of construction activity that's taking place. And we are beneficiaries of that.
You know, so there's a lot of areas to feel optimistic about. Auto is another one where, you know, we had hoped coming into the year we'd have seen stronger growth in auto. But even with, you know, relatively flat production, we've been able to deliver year-over-year growth in the auto sector. And if you look at the last few weeks, we've been up a couple% year-over-year. So, and, you know, I think there's reasons for optimism. The expectation is that interest rates will continue to come down. I don't know how quickly and, you know, what ultimately how that plays out with the consumer. But I think it's much more likely we see lower rates than higher as we go into next year. That benefits autos, it benefits housing. And when you think about those markets, it's not just autos and forest products.
It bleeds over into metals and chemicals as well. As long as the consumer is strong and steps back into large purchases, there's some positive shoots there. I will also, you know, go back to the industrial development story that we spent a lot of time on at the investor day just to sort of reemphasize the point that we really think it can be a big contributor to merchandise growth over the next couple of years. Christina Bottomley, who leads that group, talked about an opportunity to grow our volumes by 150,000-300,000 loads due to new industrial development activity over the next three years. We already experienced some of that this year. Our merchandise volume has been buoyed about 1% this year by industrial development activity, new plants that have come online or expansion of plants that were existing. Call that roughly 25,000 loads.
We think next year is even better, and then that pipeline accelerates from there into 2026 and 2027 with nearly 550 active projects across our network.
Right. Yeah, you did a really helpful job of giving us a lot of detail at the analyst meeting that was really, you know, well put together. You know, if you're saying it's, is it kind of one to two points of tailwind in 2025? Is that a reasonable way to think about the tailwind from industrial development in 2025?
Yeah, I think that's sort of the target is one to two points every year for the next three years. Again, it'll likely accelerate from 2025 to 2026 and 2027.
Right, right. Okay. What about petroleum products? That's an area where there's been a fair bit of strength. I think, you know, years ago that used to be like, you know, crude by rail and there was a big Philadelphia refinery. You served a couple trains a day at the peak and whatever. And that's presumably not, you know, that's not it. But what is it in petroleum products that seems to be driving some strength? And is that an area that can continue to grow?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, again, it's evidence of a strong, you know, marketing presence that we have in that area, strong partnership between our commercial and operations team that's done a good job of converting some business wins there and just strengthened the general market in terms of demand for LPGs. So, you know, and our service territory lines up very well with where the demand is for that. So it's been a good area of strength for us.
Okay. Do you think there's more to go in that area as you go into 2025 or was that kind of a favorable development for?
You know, I think it will remain strong. You know, I think, again, there's some issues with the comps year-over-year this year that have made chemicals in general, you know, outshine in terms of 2023 being weak. So probably not as much growth next year, but still positive within the overall chemical space.
Yeah. Okay. Great. You commented on this a bit, you know, just in terms of saying, you know, falling interest rates are beneficial across a couple different segments. But I don't, you know, I don't know if you, I mean, you probably get this question and have some high-level thought. I know it's not necessarily clean, but, you know, as you think about the housing market and interest rates and can the, you know, new home, you know, can the, you know, existing home sales pick up and get, you know, activity of, you know, various white goods, consumer goods going in, appliances, or, you know, that can stimulate things or if it's just, you know, kind of new construction and you get other materials that go in. So that can be beneficial for freight broadly.
How do you think about how much of the book is, I don't know, sensitive to housing or if you want to just say, well, interest rates come down and they're two different frames? But how do we think about that just in terms of the optimism if those areas improve?
Yeah. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, when you think about sectors like housing or auto, they're really broad-based across our merchandise portfolio in terms of the impacts. Clearly, if we're talking about new construction or, you know, add-ons to existing homes, there's going to be a big impact within the forest product segment. And I would say, you know, that segment's about $1 billion. Maybe half of it is lumber and pulpboard and related materials. But there's impacts within metals as well. So again, whether it's residential construction or commercial construction, you know, we've got about 20% of metals that sort of tied up to housing or commercial construction. And then, of course, there's a bleed over into chemicals for any of that activity. So certainly reasons to be positive about where that heads, assuming that the consumer gets back into buying and selling homes.
You know, just personal opinion, I think it's been a long time. People have been holding on to homes that they've wanted to sort of move out of. They've been waiting for interest rates to come down. I think as we start to see that happen, we'll see some really positive signs there.
Right. Have you gotten, you know, kind of recent customer feedback in terms of like sentiment? I mean, obviously the elections were pretty recent and I think that can be, you say, well, get that event and that uncertainty out of the way. And now, you know, maybe you have optimism on what taxes do or regulation or things like that. But have you gotten customer input that would say, hey, we're a little more optimistic and now we're going to invest more considering that at least the election is behind you?
Yeah, no, it's a good question, Tom. I think there's a lot of chatter. There's a lot of dialogue around that. I think the fact that there is more than likely certainty that tax rates are not going up, with that we likely will have a slightly more favorable regulatory environment is all very positive for our customers. So I would say there's definitely optimism and hope in terms of what that means for their ability to invest and grow, what it means for the consumer as well. On the second part of your question, does that translate into increased investments? I think that's one where everybody's sort of waiting a little bit. Let's see how things play out and let's get into next year. But certainly there's a lot of positive sentiment out there and there's a lot of speculation.
But in terms of firm plans, I think it's a little bit premature.
Okay. All right. But you hear, you are hearing some kind of at least potential optimism. How do you think about the risks? So if you think, you know, a lot of discussion or a lot of, I don't know what you want to call it, noise, proposals, various things, negotiation on tariffs and want to get your sense of, you know, if there were tariffs put in place on Mexico and Canada, what's your exposure to those, you know, cross-border trade in those two, with those two countries?
Sure. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's within our business when we talk about tariffs, there's always going to be puts and takes. There'll be some markets that benefit and others that maybe, you know, don't. But in terms of exposure, in terms of international trade, Mexico and Canada are probably the two largest companies that are countries that we do trade with. It's still a relatively small portion of our overall revenue base. I would put it somewhere in the range of 10%-15% with Canada actually being a little bit larger than Mexico, particularly on the merchandise side.
Okay. And that's like a percent of revenue?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. Let's see. In terms of the going back, just swinging back a little bit to 4Q, what about how's the network running? I know October was tough. You kind of showed some resilience have come back from that. I know there are some, you know, headwinds in terms of not having some of the track available in a certain part of the network that takes a longer period of time to rebuild. But how would you say that the network is running in general in 4Q?
Yeah, I think, you know, kudos to Mike and our operating team because it's been a challenging environment between both of the hurricanes, the Blue Ridge sub being out and needing to reroute around that. But they've been extraordinarily resilient. I think the way the team is working together really shines through in situations like this where there's such significant disruption to the network. There's been periods, you know, I've been at CSX for nearly 20 years now. There's been periods where we've seen that kind of disruption and it's taken us months, if not a year or more to dig out of it. You know, I would say by and large, we've worked a lot of those challenges out of the system. I wouldn't say things are running perfectly, but they're actually running quite well. We are meeting customer demand.
If you look at our customer switch data, you know, we're looking for something in the 90%-95% range. And we've been right there all quarter long, which is a great testament to how the team is working to offset some of the challenges that are out there. You know, velocity is a little bit slower as a result of the, you know, disruptions and the reroutes and those sorts of things. And, you know, Mike and the team continue to try to make enhancements to the operating plan. And, you know, that has had a little bit of an impact on dwell over the course of the year. But there's an offsetting efficiency impact to us. We talked about in Q3, crew starts being down 3% with our volume in Q3 up 3%. That's pretty dramatic efficiency gains for a network that was already running pretty well.
That bleeds over to asset efficiency benefits over time. So there's a lot of good things happening. That does mean in some cases cars dwell at terminals a little longer. But as long as the trip plan reflects that and we're meeting the customer expectations, they're not really feeling that as much. We're getting the benefit on the efficiency side and continuing to meet their needs. So I would say, you know, in summary, operating actually pretty well given a number of the challenges that we faced.
Yeah. Okay. Great. I should mention if there are any questions from the audience along the way. I know we've already kind of covered some of the demand side, but we can swing back to that or, you know, wherever you want to jump in. Please raise a hand. There's a mic at the back of the room. There is also on your table. You can scan a QR code if you want and send it to me on the iPad, which I'll place where I can see it. But so, you know, feel free to raise your hand if you want to jump in along the way and I'll check back again a couple of times. How do you think about planning for headcount? I know there's the. I guess I think of it as being kind of a six-month lead time for planning for your team.
You know, if you want to train a conductor and you have them in the training course and then getting them up on the system running, I think, you know, broad brush six months. I don't know if that's right. But, you know, presumably you have a plan already for what you need next year. Do you think that, you know, headcount needs to be up next year so you can handle, you know, potential growth that hopefully will develop? Or how do you think about that resource planning for next year?
Yeah. No, good question. And, you know, we're continually going through that equation. So it's not a once-a-year exercise. It's an ongoing dialogue. I would say also, you know, it's important that when we went through the challenges we had in 2021, 2022, and even into 2023 in terms of hiring, we spent a lot of time building an analytical framework that would help us to better predict where and when we need people, understand what attrition is going to look like by geography. We've got over a hundred crew hiring locations. And that's allowed us to get a little bit ahead of where the needs are likely to come as we go into next year. So we have been hiring actively the last couple of months. You mentioned a six-month lead time.
It is roughly six months from the day they step into the training center to the day that they're qualified. But you've got to add a couple of months on the front end to recruit and get them into the training center. So more, I think more like six to nine months. So if you think about where that puts us, you know, the last couple of months we've been hiring and getting people into the pipeline to be ready essentially for vacation season next year because that's when we tend to have a peak of people that are unavailable to work. So we backfill that with new hires and we can keep our available headcount roughly flat even through those summer months. So we've gotten a lot smarter about doing that.
All that likely means that on the train and engine side, all in, we'll probably average about flat next year to where we averaged this year. And we have challenged the operating support functions to hold flat as well, as well as G&A. So I would say all in, kind of expecting roughly flat headcount. You know, our three-year guidance for volume was low to mid single digits with merchandise growing ahead of industrial production and intermodal growing ahead of GDP. While those projections for industrial production and GDP aren't anything to write home about right now for next year, we do expect to outperform on both of those markets. And so we will see growth and be able to absorb all of that onto existing trains largely with the same amount of overall headcount as we have today.
Right. On the headcount side, you know, you've, you know, Joe's, one of his, you know, things that he's been, I think, very visible on is the, you know, One CSX. And I guess it's on his license plate, right? So there you go.
That's right.
But he's been very visible on that and very focused. And, you know, one of the potential benefits to CSX over time would be just obviously the employees, you know, good about things, doing their job well, you know, coming through to customer service. Also, attrition is something that you'd think that could be a lower level of attrition. Is that happening? Have you seen like a change in attrition, whether it's attrition within the training program or, you know, experienced employee attrition? So how do you think about that?
Yeah. No, you're right. And there's, Mike's talked about this. There's real dollars there within the training, you know, and also just making sure you're getting the right quality folks that are actually engaged and want to provide that discretionary effort. So we have started to see small improvements to overall attrition. It's hard to, you know, month by month, it's hard to kind of get a full scope of what that trend looks like. But, you know, as an example, September was our lowest attrition month of the year. So that was very encouraging. I would say the bigger opportunity is with the new hires because you're looking at, you know, roughly two in three, two out of three that don't make it through the full program, 65% roughly attrition.
So if we can bring that down to 50, 40, you know, 35, there's tremendous opportunity there to save some money and provide a better experience. And really it's the blocking and tackling. It's nothing magical. It's making sure that we're doing a really good job of screening, getting the folks in the field more involved in that upfront screening process. So we make sure we're bringing the right candidates on board and then being with them through the training process, making sure that we have a general manager or a superintendent or even Mike himself or his direct reports that go to Atlanta to the training center to welcome these employees, talk to them about how important their job is and what it means to the economy.
And then once they get out into the field, making sure that they have the right direction, that they've got the right guidance, they're checking off everything they need to do from a safety perspective, which obviously we're highly focused on. And we've also put about 50 conductor mentors out there who essentially have a full-time job of mentoring these new folks as they go out into the field, teaching them a little bit what life is like from the perspective of actually being a conductor. So big opportunity there. We're starting to see some green shoots there in terms of the attrition. And we are baking in some improvements into our plan for next year.
Okay. What does the attrition look like for people who are right out of the program? Is that because I think you were saying the high level of attrition during the program maybe, but, you know, once they graduate?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's modestly higher than the average attrition for an experienced hire. But once they get past that first year, it comes down pretty dramatically. It's really, you know, do they make it through the training center and then do they make it through the field training? If they can get through all of that and then, you know, have roughly six months of experience under their belt as a certified conductor, you know, they're fairly likely to stay.
Yeah.
Once they get to two years, five years, now you're at the normal attrition rates.
Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. What about some other elements of the, you know, the broader program? I'm thinking of, you know, how like availability of the crews.
Yeah.
So, you know, I mean, I guess it's kind of like, you know, you have a big SEC game and you have, you know, nobody wants to run the train that day or whatever. I don't know if that's the right example. I feel like, you know, okay, maybe it's a good example. So is that something where you're saying, okay, the availability of crews has improved somewhat as you've, you know, invested in your people and invested in relationships with the employees?
Yeah. I think to address that issue, you know, we're talking about mark-offs during periods of time when there's something else going on, whether it's a, you know, sports-related or it's Mother's Day or it's a holiday and, you know, the team, the operating team can't run the plan that we think serves the customer best. That's been a, you know, decades-long challenge for the railroads to work through. I think to get there fully to really offset that challenge, there's two things. You know, one is just recognizing it and not putting your head in the sand and assuming it's not going to happen. So knowing when those events are, planning around them and adjusting the train plan, which, you know, we did that over Thanksgiving. We came out of Thanksgiving and our operating metrics are as good as they've been in the last several months.
So, you know, that's the first part is just adjusting to it and planning for it. The second is likely needing to work through some negotiations with the unions to try to improve the way that this is done. And, you know, without getting into specifics, there's puts and takes there and, you know, there are some challenges to get there, but we're having constructive dialogue. And I think everybody has a shared goal because the better job we do of serving the customers, the more business there is, the more jobs there are long-term. So, you know, I think there's a reason for optimism there. And I know Mike and Joe are working very closely with the unions to try everything we can to try to address that issue.
So is that if you look at, you know, you've taken a different approach on the union agreement this time around. And so the, you know, wages and benefits and other things, you know, kind of agreement on, and then the next thing after ratification is then you try to negotiate some of the, you know, I guess work rules or local elements of the local agreements. Is it, you know, availability and kind of flexibility on labor that's important that you might want to get? Or how do we think about high level what you might want to achieve?
Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, it's trying to maximize the efficiency of the employees and allow us to run the train plan as consistently as we possibly can. You know, from the perspective of the employee, it's about having a more predictable and reliable schedule, so they know when they're going to work. They have visibility to it. They can plan on it. You know, they don't get called on their wife or son's birthday, and you know, that's better quality of life for the employee, and that works well for us too because it, you know, obviously makes them want to continue to work longer, feel more motivated when they've got that reliability and consistency, so that's what they're looking for.
What we're looking for is, you know, the ability to run the train plan consistently and get the maximum efficiency out of the employees.
Right. Okay. Makes sense. Just a reminder, if there are any questions, you know, please raise your hand or send in a question and I'll look for it. Let's see. At the analyst meeting, you gave the three-year frame and you talked about, I think it was the high single digit earnings is kind of the right place to be in and some other parameters.
For EPS, high single digit to low double digit.
Right. High single, low double. Yeah. Thank you. So high single to low double over the three-year time frame. You did identify that 2025 has some headwinds, right? You didn't, at that point, you didn't want to like make them put a fine point on them. But do you have any more comments or any more perspective to help us think about the magnitude of those headwinds in 2025?
Yeah. So I mean, I think first I would say that nothing's really changed in terms of that three-year guidance. You know, all the core tenets of it remain the same. And, you know, I think the key ones are merchandise growth ahead of the industrial economy, intermodal growth ahead of gross domestic product, continuing to price ahead of inflation and driving efficiency gains that help to offset inflation. All four of those tenets are, you know, absolutely within our plan for 2025 and will be for 2026 and 2027. So all of that holds true. When we talk about 2025 specifically, there are a couple of challenges that we'll be facing. We talked about the network disruption with the Blue Ridge sub down. We also talked about the Howard Street Tunnel, which for those that don't know, this is the tunnel that runs right underneath the city of Baltimore.
It's about three times as long as the Virginia Avenue Tunnel that we rebuilt in Washington, D.C. a few years ago. That was a major project. This is even more significant. We've gotten significant funding from the federal government, state, and local governments, which is great to help offset the costs and really transform the operations along the I-95 Corridor to allow us to double stack, getting more efficiency and capacity to grow. But we're going to have significant impacts next year to the network. We have elected to get all of this done in a very short period of time. We're excited about that opportunity, but it's going to shut down that part of the network for the greater part of next year.
We think between that and the Blue Ridge reroutes, we're probably looking at $10 million a month or a little bit more than that, certainly through the first three quarters and likely bleeding over a little bit into the fourth quarter. So that'll be a big impact next year that will go away completely the following year and then be replaced by efficiency gains and the opportunity to grow our intermodal business in that quarter. So it'll be a net positive for the three years, a negative for next year. We said going into the guidance that, you know, we can't control export met prices and we can't control fuel prices. We think over the three-year period, export met prices will remain relatively stable to where they were in 2024.
For next year, you know, if we had the same export met prices we have right now, we'd have some headwinds year-over-year. We think that there's an opportunity to see global demand for export coal go up next year. We actually think volume will grow next year in the export space. But, you know, at current prices around $200 a ton, if you run that out over the course of the year and just do the modeling, you're looking at a $200 million headwind. So that's, you know, clearly that would be a big, you know, hurdle to overcome in terms of growing next year. We're optimistic it's a little better than that, but if you just took $200 a ton and ran it out, that's where you'd be. We also talked about fuel prices. You know, I talked about that earlier.
It could be $75 million headwind mostly in the first half. And then domestic coal, we do have some plant closures next year, low natural gas prices. So we'll see how that market plays itself out, but that'll also be a headwind. So those are the challenges. Despite all of that, you know, we've got a lot of positive momentum in the running of the network and lots of optimism for what it means for merchandise and intermodal growth next year.
The $200 million headwind on the export coal is just the price impact. That's kind of thinking about that as an EBIT impact maybe, but some offset maybe from the volume growth. Is that a reasonable way to frame that? Okay. Okay. How does the Howard Street Tunnel impact work? Like, is there volume? I don't know if you want to say, like, is this like a couple trains a day that go through that get affected or is it, I don't know if it's a lot. I don't have a good sense of like how dense that part of the network is.
Yeah.
Is there a volume impact where you say, hey, you know, shippers are going to find an alternative temporarily?
Yeah.
So we'll get a little bit of intermodal volume impact? Or is it just like, hey, we pay more to, you know, run whatever the alternative route is?
Yeah. We've got a, there's a decent amount of volume that moves there. We've got an operating solution for most of it.
Okay.
You know, I would say of that $10 million or so a month, maybe 15%-20% of it is a revenue impact that we would expect. The rest of it is going to be increased costs from reroutes. And most of those costs, I should note just for modeling purposes, those will be in PS&O, Purchased Services and Other, they'll flow there. So, but it's mostly just increased costs to get around the tunnel and to do the things we need to do to serve the customer.
Okay. And when you get on the other side of it, how meaningful is that to you to be debottlenecking? You know, I guess I don't necessarily have a lot of intuition of, you know, how much intermodal runs the I-95, how important that is to you. Obviously, if you can do double stack economics, that's a huge win.
Yep.
But how do we think about like what is opened up for you when you're on the other side of that?
Yeah. There's a lot of opportunity. In fact, the team's been working on building that pipeline. And when you think about, I mean, the original plan with the Howard Street Tunnel was to do this over three years, looking at 12-hour outages every single day. When you think about the impact to the customer, because every day wasn't going to go perfectly over that extended three-year period, we really felt like that was going to have such a negative impact on the customer experience. It would hamper our ability to grow the volumes once we're on the other side of it. So by doing this quickly, we actually think that pipeline of opportunities that we've already built will be able to convert them more easily.
You know, I would say on those reroute costs of $10 million a month, we're going to get a payback within a couple of years on that between the efficiency gains and the volume growth that we expect on that corridor. So it's, you know, really good news story, win-win for us and for the customer.
What are the markets that you would, is that kind of like, I guess, southeast going north? Is it north coast? I mean, like, is it, you know, and kind of the, I guess that's flows to domestic intermodal or is?
Yeah. It flows both ways. Domestic intermodal, yep. Yeah.
Okay. Great. Let's see. So how are you thinking about pricing for next year? Are you optimistic? I mean, I know there's some sensitivity on truckload. There's, you know, your own good momentum on service and translating that to price. But how should we think about pricing and also whether there are, you know, kind of whether we should be optimistic about pricing accelerating or kind of stability is a good thing?
I think, you know, first, let's set coal pricing aside because we've got our headwinds that we talked about.
Yeah. Excellent. Excellent.
But if we look at merchandise and intermodal, we feel good about next year. We're in the contract renewal cycle as we speak. You know, I've said this before. I get visibility to where those contracts are repricing every single week. And, you know, I feel good about the trends. Inflation has come down over the course of the year. We expect it to continue to moderate or stay stable to kind of where it is. So we will price ahead of inflation. The dollars of merchandise and intermodal price will absolutely exceed the dollars of inflation. That's what's in our plan for next year. And that spread will be contributory towards operating income next year. You know, I wouldn't say there's going to be a re-acceleration, but I think that the trend that we've been seeing the last several years will continue.
How much sensitivity do you think there is to the trucking market? So let's say, you know, we think of our base case on truckload as next year's transitional. You get call it, you know, 3%-5% price. And I think that input we've heard from, you know, nobody knows the answer, but we've had, I think we had like eight different private companies at a dinner on Monday night that are large truck brokers. And so people take a view and they think, you know, 3%-5% seems to make sense for truckload contract season. They kind of get that more in second half. How much of your book do you think is sensitive to that? Like if it's not 3%-5%, what if it's 5%-7%? Do we see that come through for better price in second half with CSX?
Or is that more like a, hey, that's a read for better in 2026?
Yeah. It's, we've got a little bit of a lag relative to what the truckload market experiences, particularly within intermodal. International, those are generally longer-term contracts with fixed escalators or indexed escalators. So that wouldn't be impacted. It'd really just be on the domestic side. And there is a little bit of a lag in terms of when we see that truckload pricing benefit. You know, I think we'd also see the volume benefit of it as well as that spread widens between truck and intermodal pricing, truck and rail pricing on the merchandise side as well. It would be very positive in terms of our ability to continue to convert freight. I've mentioned this before, but there's freight that we've won that we haven't fully realized yet because the truck rates have been compelling enough to continue to have some stickiness in terms of that product moving by truck.
They've been able, the customers have been able to continue to save money without switching modes of transport. As that dynamic shifts, we're the beneficiaries of it. And there's business that we're serving today. I think we get even a greater share of that at plants that we're already serving. And that's the best business we can get. Very, very little incremental cost on that, high incremental margins. So that would be the most direct positive in terms of the pricing benefit. We would see it not to the same magnitude, but we're also shielded on the downside and there would likely be a little bit of a lag.
How much is the lag you think? Is it like a quarter lag or is it a couple quarters?
Yeah. A quarter to two quarters, just depending on the contract and the dynamics there.
Okay, and that's between like domestic intermodal and say contract truckload?
Yeah.
Okay. We're almost out of time, but I want to give you, I don't know if you're the CFO. And so you look at costs, you look at what are the buckets, what can I do, right? So a couple of years ago, I think that the, you know, I want to say it was Kevin when he was CFO, but he's like, you know, our overtime costs are kind of high and this is an opportunity, right? And you went after it and you captured it very nicely. And those numbers came down. Is there anything that you look at as you look through the numbers and say as the CFO, this is kind of an interesting bucket that over time we can do a bit better?
Yeah. I think it's broad-based. I think, you know, there's opportunities everywhere, which is the good news. It's hard to point to one specific area, but when you think about, you know, where the costs are, there's a lot of costs in the assets, right? And the more efficiently we can run the trains, the better our asset-related cost trend. There's costs in supporting the freight cars and the locomotives as well as the track. I think there's a great opportunity to continue to work with the regulators to drive some improvements in the way that we inspect our track, the way that we inspect and repair our freight cars and locomotives.
There's a lot of technology that we're investing in and partnering with suppliers on that we think can really help us run a more fluid network that has fewer line of road failures, which means, you know, tremendous improvements in asset utilization. There's, again, there's a lot of dollars there. Are there dollars in overtime? Sure. Are there dollars in, you know, cars that are dwelling in the yards? Absolutely. So it's very broad-based. We've got initiatives every year across the entire book of costs, including G&A and facilities and our engineering and mechanical support costs, and we're relentless at pursuing opportunities, and I think the team understands that. One of the things that Mike's really been emphasizing in the field is making sure that those that are running certain portions of the network feel ownership, not just overrunning the trains, but also over the cost implications of that.
So giving them more visibility to the detailed costs that are being incurred within their service territory and how they can continue to drive those down. The more shared ownership we have over that, that's One CSX again. These small things really do add up. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. As I mentioned, next year our plan is to drive efficiency gains that exceed inflation. And I'm optimistic we'll be able to do that.
Excellent. Let's wrap things up there. Sean, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for the insights.
Thanks, Tom.