I am here? Okay, yes, we're webcast. I think we're going to get started here. This is our last session of the conference. We're webcast, so it's for people that are listening. My name is Amit Mehrotra. I'm the Deutsche Bank Transportation and Maritime Shipping Analyst. I couldn't be more excited to have Alan Shaw, President and CEO of Norfolk Southern, here. Ninety days in the job, but 27 years at the company, so it's going to be really great. We have Mark George, the Chief Financial Officer, as well as Luke Nichols, the recently appointed Investor Relations Officer. Thank you all for joining us. Alan, I think you have a few slides, and then we'll get right into a lot of Q&A.
Yeah. Amit, thanks for hosting us. As you noted, we brought the A-Team.
That's right.
We're ready. I'm going to start with a little housekeeping. I will make forward-looking statements. They're obviously subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may vary. I invite you and our listeners to take a look at our quarterly filings with the SEC for more information on our risk factors. Also, all these slides will be out on the web.
Great.
In the second quarter, we delivered record revenue and record-setting second-quarter EPS. From that standpoint, it's a really solid quarter. We understand we could have done better if we had a better service product because we certainly could have handled more volume, more revenue, and our cost structure would have been better. Our margin profile would have been substantially better. We've really focused on three areas in order to address service. I'm going to talk about all three of those. Effectively, it's resources in the form of crews, it is operating plan, and it's leadership. I'm going to talk about crews here on this slide. This is slide three. We were at our trough in terms of qualified T&E members about midpoint in the first quarter. We decided to aggressively start hiring crew members in December of last year when I became president.
Let's say it takes four or five months once you get them on the property to get crews trained and qualified. What you're starting to see as we move through the second quarter and into the third quarter is our qualified crew members have started to reflect positive. At this point, we're over 260 qualified crew members higher than we—that's net of attrition—than we were at our trough in the middle of the second quarter. I think what's also encouraging for us is the fact that our pipeline for conductor trainees remains really strong. We've got well over 800 in our training class now. Again, it'll take four or five months for those folks to become qualified to work productively and safely. You should expect, and we always do, relatively high attrition in that class because it's a rude awakening. It's 24/7.
It's outdoors, right? It's not for everybody. We try to expose the trainees to that environment during the training class. If they decide this isn't the right lifestyle for them, they make that decision during training instead of when they're out on the property. Really good progress there. The second thing that we've done is launch TOP| SVG, a new operating plan. Let me be really clear about that. That is about optimizing our most precious resource, which is crews. It is designed to improve service, improve productivity, and improve growth by creating a road train plan that optimizes our crew base. It absolutely follows the principles of PSR, which is serve your customers, manage your assets, control your costs, work safely, and develop your people. It's a balanced plan.
When we talk about balance within the rail industry, what you ultimately want is in any given terminal, the inbound trains and the inbound locomotives match the outbound trains and outbound locomotives. Because if you do not have that, then you are going to be redeploying assets in a non-productive way, whether that is crews or locomotives. We have really enhanced the balance in our network. I am sure we are going to talk about TOP|SVG more in Q&A. I will get into that a little bit more. We also drove simplicity in our network as well. As we took a look at our train plan, we found, and it makes sense, that we had a lot of train originations bunched during a pretty short time period in that 24-hour window. We took advantage of the 24-hour window, spaced those around. You can do that.
You can change the spacing of your trains if you run more direct point-to-point trains instead of having a lot of intermediate stop-offs. That has created more space and room to operate on our network, which has reduced overall train needs for us by 40%, which is pretty remarkable. I mean, that's going to be a great lift of our productivity and our resiliency and our ability to execute on a daily basis. Consistent with the principles of PSR, it's an iterative plan. We're going to put a plan in place. We're going to measure compliance, measure execution, and we're going to continue to look for opportunities for improvement. We've just recently implemented some new changes into our intermodal franchise. Really, what we're doing here is we're seeking signals from our customers as to where our customers see strategic growth opportunities.
What are lanes where they think they can really grow if we provide a consistent, reliable service product? In those cases, we're enhancing our service offerings. We might be launching more trains in a day. We're not going from two terminals in Chicago to two terminals in Eastern PA. A train leaving from one of the terminals in Chicago is going to go to one of the terminals in Eastern PA. That creates density, which allows you to launch more trains from that terminal, but not have more train starts in total.
That's something you're doing right now, I think, right? In terms of changing destinations and consolidating destinations.
That's exactly right. By launching trains more frequently from terminals, if a customer misses the 6:00 A.M. drop-off at the intermodal terminal, instead of waiting till the next day, the customer might be able to meet the 4:00 P.M. drop-off at that terminal. Cleaning your terminals more frequently should help with terminal congestion and will absolutely provide a better service product to our customers. As I noted, we're not doing this with any additional crew starts. One of the ways we're doing that is we're, again, looking for signals from our customers of where they're not finding a lot of strategic growth opportunities in some of the lanes that we serve, where we're not growing. In those lanes, we might still offer that same product, but probably less frequent in any given week. You can redeploy those crews.
You can redeploy those locomotives and those rail cars towards higher growth opportunities. It really is, for us, it's consistent with our approach for yield up, which is effectively where we were seeking market signals on where to best deploy our assets. We're pivoting and taking a really fresh look at our merchandise network as well. We have a longer-term strategy on our bulk operations network, which is unit trains. That'll take more time. We have some sidings that we need to complete. You've heard us talk over the years about our siding strategy that Mark and his team are leading. Our AC to DC locomotive conversion certainly helps support our long train strategy as well.
Frankly, we're going to need to get inside of our customers' capital budget cycle because they will absolutely, in many cases, need to make adjustments to their unloading or loading capacity to handle longer trains. Ultimately, customers are looking for bushels of corn or tons of coal. Less trains, but delivering the same amount of volume or more upside is beneficial to both customers and us. I'm encouraged by our start there. We're going to get a lot of support from that. As we implement this, as I noted, we're going to be intently focused on execution and compliance to the plan. That's really where leadership comes in. In March of this year, we onboarded Paul Duncan, who's our Vice President of Network Planning and Optimization.
We took the daily dispatch out of transportation and had it report to Paul because it was very important to me that the folks who are designing the road train plan are responsible for dispatching the road train plan on a daily basis. We also made a change, as you know, within the last couple of months in our VP of transportation and put Floyd Hudson in there. Floyd's done a remarkable job and shown a lot of leadership and really driven daily execution into our plan. What that allows is you got Paul's team focused on the plan, the dispatch of the plan. Floyd's team is completely focused on the execution of that plan on a daily basis.
Because frankly, what you want in PSR is for the folks in the field, the transportation team, to show up every single day and know exactly what they're supposed to be doing that same day. It probably ought to be static. It ought to be the same thing they were doing the day before and the day before. That builds that muscle memory. What you get is once you have high compliance to the plan, you've got a good flow of metrics and data, you start to look for opportunities to tweak. That is driven by the central planning team. In advance, you identify what success looks like and how you're going to measure it. If it's successful, you implement it elsewhere. If it's not successful, you learn something and you look to innovate in another way.
As a result of this, as a result of the crews, as a result of the plan change, as a result of the improvements in our operations leadership, you've seen some pretty meaningful results in our network fluidity. Our train speed is at levels that we hadn't seen in over a year. Our terminal dwell is now at the best levels it's been at this entire year. We're certainly encouraged by the progress there. It's not where it needs to be. We're not going to stop until it gets to where it needs to be. As I think about the network performance, a slow network is costing us revenue. There's no doubt about that. We could handle a lot more volume if we were moving faster. There's also a friction cost associated with a slower network, right? You spend more money on recruits, right?
If a train's supposed to get from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and because of a slow network, it can't get all the way there before the crew times out, crews have got hours of service, you have to call another crew to go out and pull that train into the destination terminal. Those are frankly crews that I would much rather use on a scheduled road train. With the improvements that we've seen in our leadership and our plan, you can see some pretty substantial improvements in our overall recruits. That's a friction cost that as our network speeds up, we're going to shed. Also, as our network speeds up, it's going to help locomotive utilization. It's going to help car utilization. It's going to help fuel efficiency as well. The other thing that we always look at is our customer-facing networks.
You see really remarkable improvement over the last four or five weeks in our customer-facing metric and our merchandise network. We are delivering market improvement in a relatively short order. Our customers are noticing too. They are talking to us about transitioning more business back to Norfolk Southern. I have talked to the CEOs of two of our channel partners. I have talked to a CEO of one of our bulk customers. They are seeing the improvement. They are gaining confidence in our ability to handle their business. They are talking about shifting business back to us. It takes time, right? Let me be really clear about that. We will go to the next slide. Our volumes have been kind of stagnant, I will say, sequentially over the last couple of weeks. There are a lot of puts and takes. The coal network is running really well for us.
Demand for BTUs overseas is particularly high. Frankly, domestically as well. Auto is being impacted by overall North American network fluidity. We share a pool of cars, multi-levels in there that handle the automobiles. They're not spinning fast enough. We and other roads aren't able to take advantage of all the volume opportunities that are out there. Our corn and our grain network is running really well. The boxcar network and ag and forest products is running slow. It needs to move faster. As that moves faster, we'll have more carrying capacity and the ability to handle more business. Intermodal is kind of a headline issue for us. When you see a pretty significant drop in our intermodal volumes, it's important to understand where that's coming from. That's in our international business.
Many of the steamship lines that we're aligned with are choosing to truck business out of East Coast ports to basically short-haul destinations because they want to get their boxes back to Asia because of the intent.
Truck pricing is down too.
Yes. Right. What that does for us is we don't have that short-haul international volume. That's also a positive mixed impact for us on the top line, right? It's a drop in volume. We don't see that level of drop in overall revenue. As I noted, our domestic customers are seeing improvements in our service and talking to us about shifting business back to us. Our outlook for the remainder of the year remains relatively strong. As I talk to our customers and our marketing team does, their visibility into the demand environment is pretty good for the next 45 to 90 days. As you and I were discussing earlier, even with demand starting to soften a little bit, we could still grow into this demand environment as we improve service, which we're doing.
US light vehicle production is supposed to improve 18% year over year in the last half of this year. That is going to pull more multi-level business for us, but it also should pull plastics. It should pull metals, and it should pull glass for us. Consumer activity is a little bit weaker, and so those markets are a little bit softer. As I look at intermodal, we have talked about the dynamics there. Coal is really strong for us, particularly export. We are now seeing something that I have never seen in my 28 years at Norfolk Southern, which is producers are now shifting business into the export thermal market instead of export met. Typically, export met is priced multiples higher than export thermal. Now, export thermal is about $100 a metric ton higher than export met because of the energy issues that are going on over in Europe.
That is, I think, the met price decline will have an impact on our overall RPU sequentially, but there's still a lot of demand out there. Frankly, demand is going to be limited by overall coal supply. As I close and before we get to the questions, I want to just take a couple of minutes and talk a little bit longer term. We've got a franchise that is built for growth, right? We serve a majority of the consumption, a majority of the manufacturing in the United States. We face the fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy. We've got the premier intermodal franchise. You take a look at our customers and whether or not you're talking about intermodal channel partners or you're talking about manufacturers, you can talk about energy producers or food producers.
Our customers are generally market leaders in their space. They are aligned with us. They have aligned with us because they have got faith and confidence in the quality of our franchise and our vision on where we are going to take this. We are going to compete based on operational excellence. We are going to provide a consistent and reliable service product that allows our customers to build their supply chains around and allows them to grow. We have got a talented and dedicated team. We are going to use the sustainability advantage of rail relative to truck to our advantage. That is not something that came into the logistics calculus three years ago, but it is certainly front and center right now for the decision makers. We are going to leverage technology. We are going to leverage technology to be more productive.
We are going to leverage technology to make it easier to do business for Norfolk Southern because we know that the markets that we are serving are becoming more consumer-oriented. Our own customers, their preferences for logistics services are being defined by their own B2C experiences. I am very confident about the progress that we have made on both leadership and our operating plan and our resources, specifically crews. I am extremely confident about where we are headed.
Great. Perfect. That was wonderful. I really appreciate it, because I think when I listen to that, it feels like there's some real PSR principles that are being implemented. I want to talk a little bit more about that and for you to provide more color on that. If I go back several years, we were sitting in Atlanta and the yield-up strategy came up. I think that addressed a lot of the issues of the previous decade where maybe chasing volume over price and trying to fix that revenue per revenue ton mile dynamic and go after price. You have certainly done that if you look at the yield development over the last many years. It feels like now TOP|SVG is a reflection of tangible structural network adjustments.
You gave a little bit of example of that, but hopefully you can go a little bit further in terms of talking about the lead times involved in implementing some of those strategies. Also, we think about hump yards. Hump yards are kind of thought of as where cars go to die, so to speak. I want to understand a little bit more why it makes sense to bring those back. What does that give you in this whole TOP|SVG kind of journey?
Sure. When you joined us in Atlanta, I think that was during Investor Day in early 2019, correct?
Correct. Yeah.
In 2019, in late June, about the same time period, right, we implemented Top 21, which was a new operating plan design, really implementing a lot of the principles of PSR. Since that time period, we reduced OR by 530 basis points, right? We increased EPS by 27%. We hit our OR target of 60. We returned $10 billion to shareholders either through stock dividends or share buybacks. We have been on our PSR journey for a couple of years, and we have delivered really strong results. PSR is about incremental and continual improvement. TOP|SVG is part of that. Our network has changed over the last couple of years. There is no doubt. By that, I mean our traffic flows and, frankly, the physical plan of our network.
Over the last couple of years, we had closed or we had idled hump operations at seven yards, right? As we looked over where we are and where our flows were and frankly, what our service product was, I wasn't satisfied. I asked our team to come up with a new operating plan that makes us even more efficient, makes it much more simpler, makes it more balanced. I've talked about that. We've got our terminals are more balanced. Before TOP|SVG, I would say of our 15 largest terminals, about four of them were in balance in terms of inbound and outbound locomotives and crews. Now about half of them are. We really made a step function improvement there. Our train meets have been reduced by 40% as we've deconflicted the network. That makes it much easier to get across line of road.
We need to recognize that crews are going to probably be our most precious resource for a while. We need to make sure that we're optimizing our crew base. In the second quarter of this year, we delivered record train length. We delivered record fuel efficiency in a pretty poor service environment. Just imagine how well we can do when we're running well, right? We've been implementing PSR principles over a number of years. I've been personally involved in that. TOP|SVG, I think, is another step function for us. You saw the improvement as soon as we got that implemented. When we talk about hump yards, I want to make it perfectly clear. We were still doing switching, flat switching at Macon and at Bellevue. Every railroad has got hump yards, right?
Every railroad has idled hump yards, just like we have. It makes perfect sense. The hump yards were built. Some of the hump yards were built in the 1950s. If you look at the traffic mix for rails over the last 20 years, merchandise volumes, which are the ones that use hump yards, have declined. It makes sense to take a look at, again, managing your assets, PSR principle. Look for opportunities where you do not need an asset.
I guess the question I had regarding that is it's really a question about congestion. If I look at Norfolk's cars online, it's like 175,000. It's about 40,000 more than your direct competitor, CSX. You do less non-intermodal volumes than they do. The question I have is that does Norfolk have a congestion issue? Does the hump yard actually exacerbate that congestion?
No. I'm sure you're aware that that's a non-GAAP metric.
Many ways of looking at it.
Okay. I am also sure you're aware that we measure it different from other roads. I am sure you're aware that when a car that's delivered by NS to one of our customers is sitting on the customer side and behind the customer gate, we still include that in our count. Okay? Apples to apples, do not do that. I would not do that, right? Look at trends over time. I think if you index it back to early 2019, you'll see that NS's cars online have been very flat. Frankly, what you've seen over the last couple of weeks as we've implemented TOP|SVG is that number has come down. Let's go back to the hump dialogue, right? It is perfectly reasonable to assume that using gravity and using technology is a lot more efficient than using crews and locomotives.
If you've already got business going to the yard, it's hump-capable, so you don't have to incur any additional investment. You've got the density of volume and the multi-directional flow, then turning the hump operations on works. It's working for us. Take a look at our dwell at Macon. You get those numbers on a weekly basis. It's gone down 18% since we resumed hump operations. It helps with service. It helps with saving. It helps alleviate congestion.
Okay. When we think about the crew side of it, those charts are pretty compelling in terms of the inflection you've seen in crews. There's obviously much more to come on that side. Can you talk about what level we need to get to for you to see a little bit more fluidity? By the way, we've seen a little bit of green shoots, I would say. There have been some weeks that I've even written about it where I've stepped back and said, "Hey, this is kind of interesting." It's a little bit spotty, but we've seen some signs of inflection. Can you just talk about where those signs of inflection are coming from?
When do you think we get to the point where crew or labor availability is not as much of an issue for the entire industry and for Norfolk as it has been?
Yeah. We definitely are showing improvement. You just go back the last five or six weeks. We have gotten the right leadership, the right plan in place, and additional crews. As crews come on board, and they continue to, as I noted before, we have over 850 conductor trainees in our current class. As they mark up and become qualified, and we continue to iterate our plan, you are going to continue to see improvements. Having kids go back to school helps too because people are less likely to take vacations right now as you move into September. That will help with crew availability as well. It is not linear. I wish it were, and I wish I could just extrapolate what we have done so far. It does not work that way. We will continue to see improvements. That is going to provide a lift to our volume.
I think that's going to be targeted towards the fourth quarter of this year. I think it'll be as we move through the fourth quarter of the next year when we start to hit our service targets, which is 2019 levels. That is months away, but we are seeing improvement now. More importantly, our customers are seeing it. Our customers are talking to us about shifting business back. I want you to think about a merchandise customer. A merchandise customer right now, this is the third week of August, right? She is probably lining up her rail shipments for the month of September right now, scheduling them. She is doing that based on her cycle times on Norfolk Southern, probably over the last six to eight weeks, which is when we've started to see improvements.
We are now starting to get to the point where our improvements are showing up in our customers' metrics as they make their monthly decisions on volume. It is going to take time. It really will. The volume return is going to lag the service recovery.
One thing you guys have done a good job is kind of actually keeping the operating cost structure pretty constant despite some of these service and volume challenges, I would say. I assume this part of the process is you're also adding more assets to, you're adding more resources to address some of the service issues. Can you just talk about the resources you're adding to address some of these and when those can come out as a result of some of the labor relief you're going to get over the course of the next few months?
Sure. It's really critical in an operating environment to do a robust diagnosis of what's going on in your network and understand what the leverage points are. I think you know this, but in my 28 years at Norfolk Southern, I've spent more time in operations-facing roles than I have in either customer-facing or in the finance department, right? It's important to me. I'm attracted to that. I'm drawn to it. I'm out in the field talking to our team almost on a weekly basis, both the operations supervisors and the craft employees. I'm also in our network operations center every morning. I get a sense of what's going on. For us, it's a crew issue. If you take a look back to, say, 2014, you could have said, "Yeah, there were absolutely issues associated with locomotives." That's not the case now.
Frankly, that's a good thing. That informs our decision about what assets to put in place. We're not throwing a bunch of locomotives at this issue because that's not the issue. It's getting that network sped up through crews, through leadership, through the operating plan, through our own personal involvement in this thing. That will create much more capacity and much better utilization of all of our assets.
I mean, we're seeing some of the service challenges, certainly not Norfolk specific, but even CSX, which was the earliest adopter of PSR, have equally challenging service metrics. There is something going on in the East Coast, whether it's the international intermodal volumes, the volumes that are stacking up at the ports, or the labor challenges. What do you think about the Eastern network, and not just you, but also CSX? What are some unique challenges that are happening in the East that are impacting the service metrics a little bit?
As you noted, we operate in a supply chain ecosystem. 50% of our business either originates or terminates on another railroad. All of our intermodal business is probably going to involve a warehouse or a drayage component at some point in it. If those are not working well, if the steamship lines do not have the chassis, if the warehouses are full, if the drayage community is not running well, or if the national boxcar pool or the national multi-level pool is not operating well, that is going to have an impact on our service. I am not using that as an excuse, right? I am personally committed to getting this service thing fixed. I am personally committed to competing based on operational excellence. I am driving accountability into our organization. We are focused on the things that we can control.
There's a lot of self-help here for Norfolk Southern through leadership, through crews, through operating plan. You're seeing the results of that.
Yeah. I hope you don't take this question the wrong way because it's not meant to be taken that way. There's a lot of people right now that can help you accelerate that process that have decades of experience in PSR, whether it's Jim Bennett or Sameh Fahmy or other people that have a lot of experience that would be willing, I think, to come in on a three-month, six-month consultancy basis to accelerate to help the existing team. I've asked this question to Union Pacific as well in the past, but how do you think about the potential of bringing somebody in, just like CN has in the form of Ed Harris, to serve as that consultant that can help that execution or accountability part of the TOP|SVG?
Yeah. I'm going to pull every lever it takes. We brought in somebody. We brought in Paul Duncan from another railroad. You see the impact that he's had on our franchise. We changed out our VP of transportation. You see the impact that that's had. Now, we understand PSR. We improved OR 530 basis points over the last three years. It's a 27% improvement in EPS. We understand the principles. We understand what to do. I am personally committed to getting this thing fixed. We're going to pull on every single lever that it takes.
Great. That sounds good. The other question I had, it looks like the stars are kind of lining for 2023. You have service fixed. Fuel prices still expected to stay quite high. There is a lot of economic incentive to move on the rail. You have a huge intermodal franchise, which obviously benefits where the growth is coming from. When we think about 2023 and having all the ducks in a row, so to speak, a lot of this TOP|SVG implementation done or being implemented, what do you think the opportunity is? I mean, is there a big catch-up here as we think about 2023 where a lot of the inefficiencies that the industry is seeing now can reverse? You just really have a great opportunity just to put up some big numbers.
Yeah. I mean, that's exactly why I closed the way I did. I'm confident that we're going to get through these near-term issues. Longer term, as you noted, I'm confident that we got the people and we got the franchise to take advantage of what's going on out there. Frankly, part of our franchise are those incredible intermodal channel partners that we're lucky to serve.
Yeah. J.B. Hunt was here yesterday, and I don't think they could be more excited about your leadership at Norfolk and the growth opportunities that you guys can kind of continue together.
Yeah. They're invested in growth, and they're invested in growth on Norfolk Southern, and we're investing in their growth as well.
When do you think, so one of the questions I've been asking to different rail companies that have been here is sort of when they think we can see a 10-15% improvement in some of the broader service metrics they follow, whether it's dwell or velocity. I mean, what do you think are realistic? I think you said maybe on the last calls that early next year is when you feel like you can really be in a position where you're at a point where fluidity is back to where it was. Or can we see it a little bit earlier?
I think you can see a 10-15% improvement earlier than that. We're almost there based off of our trough. We've delivered that. I think we're going to continue to make improvements. Again, it's not linear. I can't extrapolate. I know that to your point, we're going to get that right collection of crews, of plan, and leadership as we move through the fall late into this year and early into next year. I think we'll be humming.
Any questions for Alan at Norfolk in the audience? Doug?
Probably a naive question from someone with a bit less rail experience than anyone on the podium or the room. Some of your competitors, other forms of transportation, are focusing on developing autonomous operations, particularly trucking. Is it conceivable that we would see something like that in railroad operations? What benefits would it bring, or is it simply too big of a whack on a beehive of other issues that you do not want to deal with? If trucking does become autonomous, how much of a relative advantage do you lose in various parts of your business?
I think that's a fantastic question. Yes, we have developed autonomous operations in the form of PTC, right? The technology is there. We run in a closed-loop system as opposed to open-source highways. It would seemingly be much easier to implement and get regulatory approval to do it on the rail network than on the highways. We're confident that we've got the solution. One of the things that we're engaged with right now in talking to our labor unions is about repurposing our conductors to a ground-based role. It helps their quality of life. It'll help retention, and it will help our own resiliency. That will also help the efficiency of our operations as well. We're taking a look at the next generation of our intermodal terminals and looking to see where we can implement autonomy and more technology into those as well.
There are a number of areas in which we're looking to implement technology, as I noted in the prepared remarks, to really enhance our productivity and our efficiency.
A quick one too. Hi. One of your competitors presented earlier today and talked about truck-to-rail conversion. Obviously, fuel prices are driving some of that, but also this view of sustainability being an important point for customers and that driving that decision. Curious if that's something you're seeing as well.
Yeah, absolutely. It is. I touched on that just briefly. It really started to be something that we heard about in early 2020, which is sustainability and the fact that it now was going to make a difference. Look, we were the first railroad in 2007 to have a chief sustainability officer. We were the first railroad to have a carbon calculator on our website. It was pretty rudimentary. I don't know if you're familiar.
I've used it. I've seen it.
Yeah. It's called the Green Machine. We just put out a new carbon calculator that's much more specific. It can go from 75,000 different origins to 75,000 different destinations. We partnered with a trucking company because we wanted to include the drayage component as well. It will show our customers what they save in terms of fuel, carbon emitted, forest acres sequestered. We can load our customers' volumes and traffic profile into that. We can give them a sheet that shows what they've been able to save. We have had a lot of great engagement with our customers in a number of different markets using sustainability to our advantage and their advantage to shift business from highway to rail. Obviously, intermodal is the first one that comes to mind. We have also had some success in the automotive space. We have had success in the energy space.
I think that that's something that's going to be different going forward than what we've seen in the past, is that's going to be another tool at our disposal, another asset for rail to drive highway conversions.
Can we talk about the just a couple of ones for me, just on the regulatory side? The President Emergency Board released this morning. Mark, maybe we can pass the mic to Mark, and he can give us a full outline of what he's accrued and relative to what's come out. Generally speaking, I mean, how should we think about what was put out there in terms of the inflation rates and relative to what was accrued?
I can tell you that the general wage increase that was put out by the PEB is higher than what our expectation is. That said, I think it's a reasonable proposal, and we are ready to start negotiations with our unions, with the PEB recommendation as the basis. I can't thank the chairman enough and the two members for what they've done. It's clear that they came up with something that was thoughtful, well-reasoned, not emotional. It's a great template and a blueprint to start with. In fact, we've already started negotiations with one union's class this morning based on that.
Like 3-4% in 2020 and 2021, obviously quite a bit higher than the inflation in 2020 and 2021, and I assume quite a bit higher than what you accrued. That would imply kind of a decent cumulative catch-up adjustment. Then 4-7% in 2023, 2024, yeah, I think I mean, that seems like it's a little bit more reasonable and more in line with maybe accruals, but maybe you can just talk about that. Because you have an ability to price in excess of your inflation. I think you've shown an ability to do that in the railroad.
To be clear, we employ market-based pricing, okay? So we're going to price to what the market tells us the value of our product is, which is why it's so important to me that we focus on operational excellence. We'll provide more value to the market. I'm not going to tell you what we've accrued because we're still in negotiations with the unions. Since it's a number that's higher than what we had been expecting, it would come to reason that we'll have something that we need to talk about on third-quarter earnings release.
Okay. That's helpful. Last one for me. One of the things I think about is mix and wanting to understand if you guys have done enough on the intermodal network to compensate for disproportionate growth on the intermodal network and the impact that has on mix. When I look at, especially in the East, the revenue intensity of one unit of intermodal is quite a bit less than the total revenue intensity of the business and other carloads. That creates a mix issue because your fixed cost structure stays the same. Is there work that needs to be done on the intermodal side to kind of compensate for that? So much of the disproportionate growth, I would imagine, will come from intermodal over time. Not now, but over time.
Yeah. You're exactly right. You can't equate the work effort required to ship a 53-foot double-set container to an 89-foot boxcar, right? It's different, right? There are some things that we will continue to do to make our intermodal franchise more efficient. I talked about us revisioning the intermodal terminal of the future. Our longer train strategy has application to the intermodal network as well. It's not just about making long trains longer. In fact, it really isn't that. It's really about making shorter trains longer, right? You're bringing the overall average up. It is about adding revenue density to existing intermodal trains. We've really focused on that over the last couple of years, which has really helped improve the margin profile for our intermodal business. It competes very well for capital for us.
One of the things that Mark and I have talked about doing is we know intermodal is going to grow over time. Let's make sure we're making ratable, consistent investments in our intermodal franchise over time. Do not try to time the peaks and the valleys. Let's make sure that we've leveraged the strength and the previous investment in our intermodal franchise because that's facing the fastest growing segments of the economy.
When I look at the customer advisories, there's a lot of pretty consistent closures or metering or end-gate closures. Is there a system that you can develop that kind of allows for a more consistent flow of intermodal traffic through the network? Just talk about what you can do to kind of create a little bit more consistency in that part of the business.
You know, I think it really is that interface between rails and our channel partners and their customers as well. Because a lot of that is the result of chassis availability, chassis that we do not own. A lot of it is the result of warehouse congestion or the result of drayage shortages. I think some of the things that we are doing in TOP|SVG, where we are in high-volume, high-density lanes, we are increasing the frequency of train launches, helps clean those terminals much faster, which gives us more of a buffer for those volumes. Again, I am really pleased, and I think Norfolk Southern is very fortunate that we are partnering with the two best channel partners out there. I am confident we are going to get this fixed because we are both invested in each other's growth.
For sure. Any last questions for Alan before we wrap things up? All right, Alan. Really excited to see your progress. I wish you the best of luck, and we'll be watching. Thanks so much for joining us.
I mean, thanks for this opportunity. It's great to spend some time with you.
Thanks, Alan.