A lot.
All right. You guys can all take your seats. We'll get started here. We have CSX up next. We got Maryclare Kenney, who is the new Chief Commercial Officer. Very excited to have you here today.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming. Bill Slater is in the audience reprising his old role here, for a change. Thanks very much for making it here. I know it was a little bit difficult, but, you know, with the weather, you know, there's been a lot of disruptions we thought we'd have been out of them by now. Clearly not. How is the network running, you know, overall, and what sort of service do you have in your team to sell and bring to the market?
Yeah. Thanks, Brian. First of all, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. I would say, you know, overall, the network is running well. We've certainly seen some weather impacts this year, so I think, you know, as I think back as we start off the year, first part of January is actually pretty good, and then got hit with two storms kind of back to back, that impacted both the network, but also some of our segments of the business, with customers having challenges being able to load and kinda keep up with their typical volumes.
We kind of recovered from those initial storms, had a few more impacts over the course of February, but I'd say the operating team has done a really nice job building resiliency into the network and really getting it back up to strong levels of service performance. From a market perspective, there are certainly certain areas that have been more impacted by the weather issues than others. I'd say aggregates, so when you're trying to get rock out of the ground and it's frozen, that can become a challenge. We've seen a little bit of a slower start than what we had planned within that market. Waste has a little bit more impacts from the weather.
I would say on the coal side, you know, while higher natural gas prices and demand with cold weather pulls demand for coal, we definitely saw some impacts end of January, early February from frozen coal. We're starting to recover from that as well.
Didn't know frozen coal could happen.
Yes. Unfortunately, it does not make it easy to unload coal when it's frozen. Creates challenges both on the producer side and at the distribution side at the end.
Other than weather, obviously energy prices, energy price volatility, uncertainty has been, you know, the next big topic. Couple questions here. Maybe we can start with some of the end markets that are impacted, you know, already or could be if this continues.
Sure.
Maybe there's some positives there, but probably uncertainty. Which ones are you kind of focused on now that could be impacted by what's going on in energy markets?
Yeah. I would say as we think about where energy prices are, anything that has kind of a higher demand pull there could certainly be impacted. When I think about our broader segments, certainly we're keeping an eye on chemicals. You think about plastics, that area, there's more, you know, energy pull into it, and so higher prices could certainly impact. There's also the consumer aspect when you think about the chemicals business, right? Once again, as you think about higher energy prices impact the consumer, you know, that could certainly impact that portion of the business. Another area that's obviously very consumer-focused is intermodal, and so one we'll keep an eye on as things continue to progress.
Another area that has kind of more of the demand on the energy side is certainly the metals business. There's a lot that goes into manufacturing there. Although we've seen a pretty good start in terms of several segments that we have within our metals portfolio. The scrap side of the business, our pipe side of the business, we're still seeing a lot of demand there. The other piece I would say, though, when you think about higher energy prices, higher natural gas prices, that does create some positivity for domestic coal.
Mm-hmm.
We do think the demand for domestic coal will remain strong throughout the course of this year. I would say as we think about our particular business at CSX, there are a couple of utilities that are supposed to retire on our network this year. We see the high demand there. We think it will remain strong over the course of the rest of this year. I think the big question for us is these utilities that were planned to retire, do they actually retire this year, or do we see extensions? There has been some of that by the Department of Energy over the course of the last year. Those have typically been kind of 90-day type of extensions, so you don't have a long horizon to look at in front of you.
We feel like if those remain online, we could definitely see some strength within our domestic utility business this year.
Just on those retirements, is that something. Doesn't sound like you have too much visibility to, and it's just a 90-day, like, push and push to-
Unfortunately, that's what we've seen so far, is it's typically a 90-day cycle. Right now we've got visibility out till kinda late spring on a couple of these locations, but we're keeping a close eye on it. I do think the, you know, the demand on the grid is pretty strong out there right now, and so, we feel optimistic about the fact that we might see some of these extended further, but just exactly how long is hard to pinpoint at this point.
The other side of higher energy prices, obviously on revenue, fuel surcharges, and then clearly on the expense side. Maybe you can give a little comment on, you know, what the pass-through is, 'cause it's gone up pretty significantly.
Sure.
Clearly you're burning this, you know, fuel as you're making the service deliveries and whatnot, and that's real time.
Yeah.
Any thoughts on how that could play out here now that we've seen this pretty big spike?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, certainly there's been recent volatility on the fuel side. I think as we look at it today, where current fuel prices are, we'd see about a $20 million-$ 30 million headwind to the current quarter, and that's really based on our fuel surcharge program, really re-indexing up to current highway diesel rates that are out there. We do feel confident, though, while it's an impact to this quarter right now, that we will recover that over the course of this year.
Right. 'Cause the surcharge has a lag. It's in the contract.
It does. Yes.
It'll make up for it.
It's just a timing piece.
Okay, you know, your current outlook is basically for flat industrial production. You know, we've seen a couple months of improving PMI, which has been, you know, a nice change. I don't know if that's been put in the backseat because of the energy price volatility, but what's sort of your view of the industrial markets now that we've seen perhaps a little bit of improvement?
Sure. I would tell you know, we did a lot of examination kind of planning as we came into this year. Where we are, you know, two and a half months into the year is pretty close to where we expected to be. I would say as I think about the broader markets, maybe kind of starting on the merchandise side of the business, you know, we talked about on our earnings call earlier this year, headwinds that we saw coming into this year with industrial production being, you know, rather anemic. While there are some signs of maybe some slight improvement, I wouldn't say we see any robust change in the marketplace right now. We called out a couple of areas, so when you think about our business, we're particularly tied to automotive and to housing.
Automotive, unfortunately, continues to face headwinds. As I think about this year, I think the most recent numbers that I saw, production's forecasted to be down about 1.5%. Sales are forecasted to be down about 2%. I would note for CSX, and we mentioned it before, but we do have a pretty large auto plant on our network, that is down this full year for retooling, and will be down into the first quarter of next year. That's a headwind for us. I would say more broadly, as you look across automotive, there's just not a lot of signs for strong improvement. I think you think about affordability, you think about interest rates, it's definitely impacting that market.
Seeing similar when you think about housing, and housing also ties into, you know, several areas of our business. Right now, I would say as we talk to our customers, the biggest kind of correlation is within our forest products business. About half of that is building products. I would say there's not a lot of optimism for 2026. I think most of them are focused on, you know, what are we seeing maybe as we get to 2027. I'd just maybe mention within our forest products business, the other side that's not building products, is the paper and pulp side.
We talked about that quite a bit last year, and so we do have headwinds still this year, really through the third quarter as we work to overlap some of the mill closures and plant closures that we saw in 2025. Really when you think about those kind of two major areas, housing and automotive, we're not seeing a lot different than what we expected coming into this year. There's a couple areas, though, of the business that we still feel pretty optimistic about. We talked about it previously, but when you look at infrastructure investment in the U.S., that is still strong. We see that kind of pull through when you think about the minerals portion of our business, so in particular aggregates and cement there.
This should kind of be the peak year of IIJA infrastructure spend. We expect that area to be strong. While it had a little slower start to the year than we expected because of the winter weather, we still feel pretty optimistic about full year market trends there. I mentioned earlier, but I would say on the metal side of the business, it's kind of puts and takes. There's obviously input from that segment, both on the aluminum side and the steel side that goes into automotive. We're seeing pretty robust growth with the scrap portion of our business and with broader infrastructure investment, pipe, bar, rod, some of those areas we feel more optimistic about for this year.
Anything that you're focused on in terms of supply chain and autos related to some of the chips? I feel like that's come up every once in a while, and it, I thought it was percolating as perhaps something to watch in the current quarter, maybe the next one. Any issues there that you're watching as well?
We're always keeping an eye on that. Ever since we came out of COVID, that's the first time I really got a better education on the importance of semiconductors and chips. It's something we're definitely keeping an eye on. I would say most recently, January was a little bit of a slower start for automotive. I think some of that was slower kind of ramp-up of production coming out of the holiday season. We did still see a few of our customers having impacts associated with aluminum shortages. That I would say is probably the bigger area right now that we're watching than the chips. I would say we saw improvement over the course of February, and we're optimistic as we think about March and beyond that hopefully most of that is now behind us.
Like I said, we're not expecting kind of robust production this year, pretty in line with what we saw last year for the broader industry, a little bit less on us. I think right now the chips are probably manageable, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
The volume outlook has got some uncertainty, maybe some headwinds to it, just generally speaking, but inflation still relatively high for the rail industry. Truck market's getting a bit better. Where do you see with all that together, where do you see rail pricing? As you're having conversations with customers, the service products increasingly better and more consistent, like I'm sure you're getting some pushback, but are you able to at least still keep rail pricing, you know, above inflation in these conversations?
I would tell you know, as I think about pricing for CSX, I would say we absolutely expect our pricing this year to be stronger on a same-store sales basis than what we saw in 2025. Mix is always gonna play an issue, and I talked about before some of the markets that are growing and some of the markets that are not as strong. You know, when you think about our mineral side of the business, that is a lower RPU area for us. We're gonna probably see more growth there this year than we're gonna see on the chemical side or the forest product side, which tend to be a higher RPU business for us. But it is an area that we are focused on.
I would say as Steve comes into the role, I think many people have asked him about it. He and I have had several conversations. We've really looked at all of our internal processes and controls, and we feel good about kind of the trajectory that we're on in terms of focus around pricing and ensuring that, you know, as Mike and team are delivering a really strong service product, that we're receiving the appropriate value associated with that service. I think as we think about the broader marketplace, you know, we're constantly watching what's going on from a truck capacity perspective. That obviously has a huge influence on many segments of our business, but in particular, the intermodal side of the business.
I would tell you, I think talking to channel partners, I think they feel more optimistic sitting here today than they did this timeframe last year. But I would also say over the last couple of years, there was a lot of expectation each year for kind of a back half recovery. I think people are a little bit wait and see right now to see what happens. You had weather impacts that impact trucking prices, et cetera. I do see some positive turn there. The one piece I would say is we do see, you know, a lag impact, right? Pricing decisions, one, we can't touch every element of our business every year. There's portions of the business we can touch. There's a timing piece to that as well.
There's decisions on contracts and things that are made and, you know, if there's more of a trucking impact, say, in the back half of this year, you'll see a kind of a lag impact to some of that pricing.
You mentioned the channel partners, probably there's still a little bit of lag, as you mentioned, in the pricing for them as well with the spot truck market. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on, like, their optimism or what they're seeing. It sounds like not really counting on the back half recovery again for the fourth time. It does seem like there's some real reasons to be optimistic. I don't know if that's really translating in how they're doing in the bid season or what they're hearing on their end of the conversations.
Yeah. I would say I think what we've seen so far in bid season has been positive. We're seeing more bids this year, seeing more opportunity, and I think shippers are really taking a closer look at, you know, what business do they have moving over the road that is suitable for intermodal. I'd say cautiously optimistic is where we are right now, and I think our channel partners are in line with that. I do expect as we work through bid season, we'll continue to see more opportunities.
How is the Howard Street Tunnel expansion fitting into all that? I think it's ramping up.
Yep.
With full double stacking at the end of the second quarter.
Mm-hmm.
It's 100,000 loads or something like that over time. How quickly can that ramp up and sort of what's been the, you know, reception to that project coming online, you know, faster than I think most of us had really thought?
Yes. Well, I will tell you, I am super excited about Howard Street Tunnel. I've been with the company 14 years, started in intermodal, and quite frankly, years ago, wasn't sure we'd actually see the day. Thrilled that we've got this project almost complete. Mike Cory and his team did a phenomenal job of getting the majority of that work on our network done in really about nine months of last year. As I think about the opportunity going forward, there's really several components to it. When you think about it, double stack is gonna provide both efficiency and capacity for us on our network, both on kind of east-west lane as well as north-south.
From a west to east perspective or east to west perspective, we've traditionally had to run single stack with anything coming out of Chicago going to Baltimore across our B&O route. That really impeded us in the past from being able to take kind of efficient double stack service from kind of western origination points all the way through into Baltimore. Basically, what had to happen was if a shipper wanted to go from somewhere in the west to Baltimore, it would go to a Chicago ramp for either BN or UP. It'd have to get dropped off the train, rubber tire crosstowned over to our ramp, and then get loaded single stack to Baltimore.
Now with that, once we have that, opening there, we'll be able to run across the B&O with double stack trains and not have to do that operation in Chicago, so driving efficiency there. On the 95 corridor, we move a good amount of traffic already between Florida and, you know, the Northeast markets on our network. Now we'll have double the capacity there. What it'll also allow us to do is efficiently connect some other markets in the Southeast that, quite frankly, didn't make sense before, to try to provide service for because of the lack of efficiency that we had in single stack operations. We're offering new lanes of service from Atlanta up into the Northeast, so think about places like New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chambersburg.
We've been having the conversations with our channel partners and directly with shippers, around what's to come. As you mentioned, we do still have one little piece of work that's being finalized right now. There was one bridge that had to be completed. We expect that to be finished, probably later next month, and then we'll be able to kind of unlock these new solutions. We're excited about it. We're already talking to customers, so they can be looking at it in the current bid season. What I'd say to you, though, is, you know, based on past experience I have, when you start offering new products and services, it typically takes a couple of bid cycles to kind of really get up to your full kind of ramp trajectory.
Got it. Well, the other area I want to ask you about, in terms of new service is the Southeast Mexico Express with CPKC. I think that's starting to ramp later this year as well. Seems like a pretty significant connection in between some pretty big end markets. What are some of the opportunities that this would unlock? Again, will this take a little bit of time to ramp, or given the size of these markets, can this actually be a little bit more meaningful in the short term?
Sure. We actually started service, late 2024. We've been moving for just over a year, from both an intermodal perspective and a carload perspective. We'd worked closely with CPKC. I would tell you know, while we had kind of southern connection points, we really didn't have a very efficient, interchange location for the intermodal side of the business. When you think about kind of coming out of Dallas or Mexico to and from the Southeast, primarily Atlanta, Florida, and now, you know, we're looking at Charlotte. Creating that connectivity has allowed us to offer a really efficient service. We've seen that grow over the course of this past year. We're looking at other service offerings, I mentioned Charlotte, that we're gonna add to that transit.
What I would say is we've also been investing. Ever since the STB approved the purchase of the Meridian & Bigbee Railroad back in 2024, we've been working on the infrastructure associated with that line. Mike and his team, once again, have been kinda hard at it, improving the infrastructure so we could increase the speed and also improve the reliability. As we think about that, and where intermodal is in competition with truck, with that improved reliability and speed, we see more opportunity to convert traffic over the highway going forward.
This is a more of a step change in terms of the consistency and the speed and the opportunity.
Yeah.
The investments are done?
Once the investments are done, its track speed will come up, and that'll also improve our ability to reliably serve those markets. We do see, and we're talking to our channel partners and shippers right now that we've had that in place for about a year, is how do we continue to work with them to target specific shippers that have historically moved traffic over the road and get that converted to the rail.
What is the general truckload conversion strategy, you know, with CSX? You have Quality Carriers, which was, you know, a little bit of a conversion, but not necessarily intermodal, more chemicals, but still all in the same bucket. Is it new services? Is it new investments? Like, clearly, this has been around for a long time. The market opportunity is still very big, but it's always sort of underdelivered, just broadly speaking for the industry. How are you approaching this in your new expanded role?
Yeah. I would tell you know, I spent a number of years up against the intermodal and automotive side of the business, and, you know, intermodal is extremely competitive with truck, right? I would tell you know, as I've picked up the carload side, I see opportunity there as well. It's not exclusive to intermodal. We're looking at our merchandise business, and it's really about working closely with our customers, really understanding their full book of business, what they're moving over the road today, and understanding why. What is it that's driving them to use a truck solution as opposed to rail? Trying to determine what would it take for CSX to be able to help them convert more to the rail.
You know, going back to 14 years ago when I joined the company, I tell you the first customers I met with, and it's something I've heard from every single customer since then, is the most important thing to them is consistent, reliable service. That is really what they're looking for. I think CSX, with investments we've made, but with the work of the operating team, we've really improved the service product over the course of the last couple of years, and our focus is on continuing to deliver a very highly reliable service offering across our lines of business.
I think the reason traffic has moved over the road in the past is because, quite frankly, the railroads haven't done a stellar job of proving over an extended period of time that we can deliver that consistency and reliability. As I look out across the other railroads, I think service performance has really improved across the board over the course of the last year or so. I can speak for us alone, but saying that that is going to be a core area of focus for us going forward. As we think about the intermodal side of the business, we do have a national accounts program where we engage directly with shippers. We have a wholesale model of sale, so we work through our channel partners.
We also engage directly with the shippers. Our national accounts team calls on those shippers. We have an optimizer tool where we basically will take the shippers, if they provide their truckload file, we can run it through our optimizer. It evaluates what business that's moving over the road today is most suitable for intermodal conversion. That's looking at length of haul, it's looking at dray distance off of our ramps. We really have, like, a consultative approach with the shipper to discuss with them what are the opportunities where we see the best options for them to convert and deliver the best service product. That isn't something new. We've been doing that for several years now.
It continues to be an area of focus for us, is to show the shippers what out there is possible and be very clear and direct with them on places where it makes sense to convert the traffic versus lanes that are more suitable to stay over the road.
Just coming back to coal for a second. I mentioned some of the base load demand and natural gas will obviously impact that as well from the domestic utility side. The export prices, I guess they're always volatile, but particularly for thermal coal right now, given what's going on in the world. Is that an area where you have some additional opportunities or exposure? And on the met side, I mean, prices come down quite a bit, but I think that's a different benchmark than what your coal would be tracking, you know, the low vol versus the high vol. Maybe a little bit more on the export opportunity, as you see it.
Sure. As we think about the export side of the business, we feel pretty good about where the volume is. We had a couple of locations on our network that came back up, in the tail end of last year. Our producers have additional coal that they can move to the export markets. I think the broader export demand has been relatively stable. Where we saw the bigger impacts last year was on the pricing side. We have a lot of our business that is tied, bigger portion is met, but tied to, export benchmarks. What we saw was those benchmarks come down considerably from early portion of last year to the later portion of the year. That directly impacted our business.
As I think about where we are right now, I took this role at the end of October. I've been very closely watching the benchmarks ever since that timeframe. I would say we've seen some stability on the high vol side of the business, which is where we're primarily tied to. We don't have as much to PLV. We saw on the PLV side, the Australian benchmark that had kind of diverged a bit from high vol in the fourth quarter of last year. It was accelerating faster while high vol was kind of staying relatively flat, relatively stable. Recently, PLV has started to come back down, so they're getting a little bit closer to one another versus where they were in Q4.
I would say what's important for us is, in particular, that high vol side, it has stayed relatively stable. We are expecting it to be relatively close to where it is right now, balance of the year, and that's kind of what's built into our planning.
Right. Got it. Clearly there's gonna be a lot of focus on M&A transcontinental rail mergers for the next, well, foreseeable future. Do you feel, is there an opportunity, you know, as shippers looking to diversify some of their supply chains, there's an opportunity for CSX to pick up market share from Norfolk during this period of time?
Yeah, I would tell you, I mean, we're really focused on running a good network and running a good business. I mean, there's a lot that's gonna go on. It's gonna go on for an extended period of time. I think for me and my team, it's focus on our customers, focus on working with our operating team to deliver a really good, robust, service product for our customers and identify new solutions for them. I think the way we look at it, what happens in the industry, right now, I can't necessarily control. It's let's focus on what's important to us, and that's, you know, making sure we're delivering a superior service product to our customers, we're running an efficient railroad, that we're delivering, you know, best in class on the safety side.
That's incredibly important to both our people and our customers. Really making sure we're delivering innovative solutions to our customers to be able to grow the business. That's where our focus is gonna be for the foreseeable future.
Well, some of the services seem to be at least in reaction to the merger announcement with BNSF, so should we expect to see more of those in the works or possible? I guess, how are the ones that have already been done performing, you know, so far versus expectations or to the initial plan?
Yeah. I'd say I think there's been a lot of questions on the BNSF Southeast product that we delivered. First of all, we've been very happy with the results. I think we've seen the business perform well, and our customers have been very happy with the service product. Really kudos to both operating teams and, you know, how well they've worked together to create and deliver that solution. I would mention that, you know, the service there was in discussions well before all of the industry merger talk. I was involved in those discussions in my prior role. What I'd tell you is we're always gonna look for ways to collaborate. Is there some big partnership to be announced? No. There's nothing that we're expecting to put out there.
I think it's important that we're always collaborating with the other railroads. You know, I tell you, I spent a number of years as the VP of Intermodal and Automotive, and I had very regular engagement and interaction with both the Western rails and the Canadian rails on, you know, what are potential new service offerings? What are customers looking for? And even on lanes of service that we have today, how do we continue to elevate the experience, to allow customers to convert more over to rail? I don't see that changing. I think it's incumbent upon us to work well together, and to really collaborate to create solutions for our customers.
One of the big solutions that's been, you know, promised in the merger, and as we talked about earlier, has been underperforming for the industry overall is just the truckload conversion. Do you feel that M&A or at least a bigger scale transaction is really, you know, one of the biggest ways or the clearest ways to unlock some of the conversion? Or is it less about that and more complicated in terms of like how you actually bring it to market and the other factors that shippers really care about?
Yeah. I would just say I go back to what I mentioned earlier is what shippers fundamentally care about is consistent, reliable service. That is the most important thing I have heard from pretty much every shipper I've ever interacted with. I think that's where the opportunity lies is for, you know, the rails to continue. We've been doing a nice job, but CSX been very focused on how do we elevate the service product. We've got to maintain that over an extended period of time. It can't be, you know, you've got a great service product for six months or a year. You have to be able to show shippers that you can consistently perform. You know, when they're choosing a truck, they're choosing the truck for the reliability, for the speed.
We're not gonna be as fast, but we can certainly be reliable. I think that's where the opportunity is, not just for us on our core network, but also working with the Western and the Canadian carriers, is how do we continue collectively to bring that better service product to market, so that shippers really have the opportunity to move more of their freight to rail and really capture the benefits of a rail solution.
Just going back to intermodal for a second on the international side.
Mm-hmm.
What is sort of the differentiated approach you have versus competition in the East in both in terms of, like, the ports and the rail network? Obviously, we've seen a lot of changes in terms of labor disruptions in, well, U.S. and Canada. But the port strategy, I think, often doesn't get, or at least the import strategy doesn't get a huge amount of attention. When it comes to rail, it's fairly complicated. There's a lot of different parties involved. How do you see that playing out here over the next couple of years?
Yeah. I would tell you, we've had an approach where we're collaborating and working with all of the major steamship lines in the world, but we're also working very closely with the ports. A larger portion of our traffic today does come from East Coast and Gulf ports. If a shipper wants to bring traffic, you know, IPI through the West Coast, we work closely with the western railroads to make sure, you know, we're delivering the appropriate service product from interchange into the eastern markets.
I would say that collaboration with the ports has been incredibly important to us, and so, it's constant dialogue with them on how they're planning, how they're preparing, how they're investing, and working with them so that we're really providing to the steamship lines and to the shippers, I would say comprehensive geographic coverage, right? When you think about how the ports are kinda grouped along the East Coast, there's certainly inland markets that make more sense from one or two ports versus other ports based on if you're in the north or you're in the south. We try to make sure for all of these major markets that we really have a comprehensive solution, and the approach we've taken is to try to essentially be kind of port agnostic.
Letting the steamship line and the shipper decide which port makes the most sense for them to move through, and we're giving them the right solution to the inland market. I would say what's a little bit different for us, I think where we've been a little bit more focused, is also that beyond kind of the major markets, that have traditionally moved international intermodal, we've also been focused on how can you convert, you know, some shorter haul opportunities that have traditionally moved truck, to intermodal. That has been in partnership with East Coast and Gulf ports around, what we call inland port solutions. We've launched several of those over the course of the last, you know, eight or nine years. We've seen really good traction with those.
Those are typically, you know, a public-private partnership investment, involving the state or the port, to really identify markets inland traditionally where there's truck, but where you have kind of some anchor traffic, that has kinda heavy import-export connectivity. We continue to look at those solutions. We've grown the ones that we implemented in, you know, 2017, 2018, 2019, but we're also looking at, you know, are there other places that make sense, to invest as we think about the future.
Just on that point with investing for the future, the industrial development pipeline was a big focus on the Investor Day. I think it's always been a big focus for rails in general, but maybe more visible now in recent times with the broader focus on growth. I think there's 21 new sites or something like that you guys just qualified.
Mm-hmm
Earlier this week or late last week. How has that changed? Obviously, it takes a long time to get these up and running and site selected. Volatility in tariffs and imports and everything else in between, like, has that really changed how some of these projects are developing? Like, where does that stand now maybe versus where we were last time we spoke about this at Investor Day?
Yeah. I would tell you, we're actually very happy with where our pipeline is today. We're still sitting at about 600 projects or so in the pipeline. We really haven't seen, even with kind of all of the noise that's out there in the broader economy, we still see kind of a robust pipeline in front of us there. I would say that's varying stages of, from somebody who's just announced that they wanna do something, and it might still be like a secret codename project, to ones where we're, you know, actually turning dirt and, you know, putting rail in and getting ready to move product. That's kind of the full spectrum there. We've really not seen, though, a material change in terms of the number of projects. We continue to see inquiries come in.
Christina and her team do a fantastic job working with economic developers, working with shippers to identify new opportunities. I would say there's a couple of locations where we've seen in, you know, I'd say the back half of last year, some of the projects ramp a little bit more slowly than what we had previously expected. I would say the number of projects has not fallen off at this point. We do continue, and you mentioned the Select Sites that we just announced yesterday. Our team is still very proactive in working with, local economic developers as well as property owners to make sure we're qualifying sites.
Because I think the most important thing when you think about somebody who's looking to move forward on a project is that they have something that's pretty easy to get up and running that isn't a multi-year horizon to get permitting and, you know, access, whether it's, you know, water, it's energy, it's things of that nature. Our team is constantly collaborating to try to figure out how do we help improve that process, to make the time from kind of decision to implementation faster than what it is today.
Okay. Well, that's a good place to end. Thanks very much, Maryc lare, for joining us today.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate your time.
I appreciate it every day.