Great. I think we're going to go ahead and get started. Welcome, everybody, to the 2022 Citi Industrial Technology and Mobility Conference. We're very excited to be back in person in Miami and really excited to be kicking off with the rails this morning. Joining us from Norfolk Southern, we have Alan Shaw, the President of the company, Mark George, who's EVP and CFO. Thanks, gentlemen, for joining. I think Alan and Mark are going to have a couple of minutes of some prepared comments, maybe a couple of slides, and then we'll get right into questions. Again, thanks so much for joining us, and I'll turn it over to you guys.
Thanks. I'll get started. Usual housekeeping here. You can find the presentation slides on our website along with the reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Alan and I will be making certain forward-looking statements today, so please check the website for our risk factors because there will be some risks and uncertainty in those comments. Turn to slide three. We've got a brief recap here of really our three-year plan that we just concluded. 2021 served as the final chapter in that three-year plan, and we're incredibly proud of the results that we had. Our fourth quarter, as we talked about on the call, we completed really a journey toward a sixty-year OR with 530 basis points of operating ratio improvement during that time period. We had 27% earnings per share growth, and we've returned $10 billion of shareholder capital in that time frame.
That's thanks to margin improvement, frankly, but also a significant improvement in our cash flow conversion. All that led to an industry-best 110% improvement in total shareholder return during that time period. You can see on this chart here the productivity journey, 450 basis points sequentially from Q3 2019 when we launched our operating plan until the fourth quarter. No coincidence that that was really supported by and driven by significant increases in train weight and train length, 20% plus in both of those measures during that time period. We have got more gas in the tank in this area, and that will continue to fuel productivity going forward. One of the key catalysts to that is our TOP|SPG initiative that we talked about on the fourth quarter call that Alan is going to talk about here now. I'll hand it to you, Alan.
Thanks, Mark. As we talked about on our fourth quarter call, we're redesigning our operating plan. We're taking a very comprehensive approach, Chris. Everything's on the table. We're looking at all of our markets. We're looking at the intermodal franchise first, but they're looking for opportunities in the near term in our bulk commodity and our merchandise network. We learned a lot as we implemented our TOP21 plan three years ago in July of 2019. Frankly, we executed it flawlessly and provided a really good service product to our customers. We're taking some of those lessons, recognizing that the markets that we serve have changed, the network has changed, and we're looking for a zero-based plan that is going to drive a lot of efficiency. That's the P in TOP|SPG.
It's going to improve our service product, and it's going to provide a long-term platform for growth for our customers. I'm not going to bias anything, but I fully expect that as we come out of this, we're going to be running longer, heavier trains. We'll be more fuel efficient and more labor efficient. What's important to me is that the entire organization is aligned around this plan. Every department at Norfolk Southern has a hand in this. The primary driver for it is our service design team that we're planning and optimization. Mark's team, financial planning and analysis, sits right next to him, joined at the hip, so that we're scoring this in real time and making sure that the decisions that we make generate long-term value for Norfolk Southern and for our shareholders. I'll talk a little bit about our volume environment.
Chris, as you know, we started off the year slowly, and that's directly attributable to our network fluidity, pressuring primarily our intermodal and our automotive and our merchandise markets. We're just not getting the turns that we need, and we're not delivering the capacity that we need into the market to take advantage of the opportunities that have presented themselves to us to start the year. Coal has done fairly well. We've got a good service product from the Central APP and the Northern APP coal fields to the ports of Norfolk and to Lambert's Point. Index prices remain elevated, which has supported both demand and pricing. We're doing a good job there. Where we really need to lift is in intermodal, automotive, and in our industrial products network.
I'm encouraged by the fact that the markets remain strong and our outlook remains strong as we move through the year. We'll talk about that briefly. Getting this resolved, getting the service fixed is our primary focus at this point. It comes in the form of a couple of things. It comes in the form of a new operating plan that's going to be more efficient, more reliable, and that we can execute on a daily basis. It also comes in the form of right-sizing our resources. We've increased our hiring levels. We actually have folks from around Norfolk Southern and multiple departments pitching in in the training process and the onboarding process. It literally is all hands on deck. We streamlined the hiring process, still very focused on safety.
What we really tried to collapse is that pre-employment screening time so that by the time we identify a conductor trainee, we get them on the ground much faster. We've increased our trainee pay. We've increased hiring bonuses. We've increased retention bonuses, particularly in some of the specific areas in which we find ourselves acutely short of crews. We're also on a daily basis looking for opportunities to lengthen our trains and become more efficient with our existing crew base. We're looking for flexibility in how we deploy our crews and looking to elongate some of the districts so that we can become more efficient with our labor. On a personal note, in the 75 days since I've assumed the role of President, I've spent most of my time out in the field engaging at the Dallas level with our D&H team, our engineering folks, and our mechanical folks.
I am really encouraged by the pride that those folks take in working for Norfolk Southern and serving our customers. What it does, it gives me more optimism as we move forward. We are going to get this fixed. We are going to get the resources right. We are going to get the plan right. We are going to be able to grow very efficiently and take advantage of what is out there in the market. I know we have the right team out in the field to execute that. I will talk very briefly about two things that I think are really supporting Norfolk Southern's growth. One is our focus on technology and improving that B2B experience so it is more like a B2C experience. We just launched NS Sites, and it supports our best-in-class industrial development team.
It is the first of its kind within the rail industry where economic development authorities or anyone looking to expand a site can go in one shop, in one spot on the web, and look for locations that they can put a new transload facility in or put a new plant. Our ID team, industrial development team, is one of the regions that we serve more vehicle production in North America than any other railroad. We are going to continue to leverage that. This is a combination of supporting our ID team and applying technology and a consumer-oriented experience to drive more business off the highway to rail. Right now, our pipeline for industrial development projects is the largest it has been in the last 10 years. I think what that does is it underscores the confidence our customers have in the economy and in Norfolk Southern.
The other advantage that rail has over truck that's sustainable is sustainability. Over 25% of our customers have announced carbon reduction goals. Our goal is to find solutions for our customers and deliver them to the market. We've been a leader in this space for a number of years. We were the first to have a Chief Sustainability Officer in 2007. Our conversations with our customers have been much more aligned around how we can transition business from truck to rail in order to satisfy their carbon abatement goals. A little bit about the outlook. It's pretty similar to where we were in the fourth quarter earnings call. We still feel very strong about the merchandise network. We just had a PMI print this morning that was pretty positive and improved above the previous month. Demand is still very strong within intermodal.
We do have some supply chain issues, particularly in the international community. However, we've got some self-help here. As we improve the fluidity of our network, we can help our best-in-class channel partners better compete with truck. The coal environment remains strong. I think we continue to be guarded in our outlook, particularly in the second half of the year. Right now, steam and coal prices and thermal prices remain elevated. If anything, geopolitical events over the last month have done nothing to support that. Still, we feel like we have a very good volume environment into which to apply our product and into which to price. Our anticipation is that as we move into the second half of the year, we'll be in much better shape to take advantage of that.
We've talked about the pressure that we're seeing on our volumes from our network fluidity, and it's definitely going to pressure our first quarter and the first half of the year. We think at this point, we have the opportunity because of that volume environment, because of all the actions we are taking to improve our service product to catch up in the second half of the year. Of course, that presumes a backdrop for the volume and service environment that I've talked about. We still believe that that'll lead to total revenue growth in the upper single digits and an OR improvement year over year above 50 basis points. In addition to that, we're targeting a dividend payout ratio of 35%-40% and capital expenditures in the range of $1.8 billion-$1.9 billion. I'm optimistic about where we're headed.
The whole organization is aligned around the need to implement a more efficient, more reliable operating plan to provide the platform for growth and improves our service. We are going hard on the lever to make sure that we've got the right number of crews in the right places. We are focused on improving service, productivity, and growth to drive long-term value for Norfolk Southern and our shareholders. With that, Chris, Mark and I are ready to take any questions you may have.
Great. Thanks very much for that very informative presentation. I forgot to mention at the top of the presentation that there is the ability to ask questions via an app. All of the information's on your tables out there and available on the webcast as well. I have that here, and I can certainly put questions in to the folks on the stage. With that, let me just sort of dive in there for a moment, I guess. I really do want to key in on the service piece that's going on with the network. It seems when we talk that there's a lot of focus on crew availability, and we certainly all know what's going on in the labor market out there.
Maybe if we could start out with really pinpointing in sort of how short are you in terms of resources, and maybe where do you need those resources most? Where are the crews sort of in the shortest supply, and how much more hiring do you think you need to do, and how much time do you need to get there?
Chris, I think if you look at our network, our route around Fort Wayne and then into the south is one place in which we're acutely short of crews. Cincinnati, Louisville, I was in Cincinnati two weeks ago. That's a location. Harrisburg is a location. We're generally tight just about everywhere. We have ramped up our hiring. Our conductor trainee class in January was three and a half times that of what we saw in December. December was the highest that we had in 2021. February, it's one week shorter, but the number of conductor trainees that we're taking on a weekly basis is slightly higher than what we saw in January. I am confident we're taking the right steps to get this resolved.
At the same time, we're going to be implementing TOP|SPG, which we fully believe is going to drive longer, heavier trains and greater crew productivity. I'm not happy with the progress that we've made. That's one of the reasons our volume is not where it needs to be. It's one of the reasons we're talking about pressure in the first quarter and potentially the first half of the year.
Okay. Chris, let me just jump in there a little bit too. We've got roughly 100 locations or crew districts where we have to hire people. Not all of them are in deficit right now. Maybe half are to some degree. Between one or two, that might be short, or it could be as high as 30 or 40 in certain locations that are short. There's really a dozen locations that Alan was touching upon where it's the most acute. Like you mentioned, we've got significant hiring plans that are in place. We've already got well over 500 conductor trainees in the pipeline, and those will be marking up. We're hoping to bend the curve on the T&E population as those mark up or actually join the force and become productive conductors.
As that happens in the second quarter, we start to bend the T&E curve up. We talk a lot in averages, but it's really this dozen or so that is most acute. Beyond that, there are other locations where we are short as well. In the meantime, how do we extract more availability out of the existing crews? More starts per week, for example, is one way. Just generally not marking off as much or marking themselves as unavailable. There are a lot of other mitigating actions that we're doing in the meantime to try to manage and triage around the constraints that we do have.
Okay. That's helpful. Alan, when you and I talked, I think when you were named into the new role as President and incoming CEO, you mentioned that your hope and expectation was that service would sort of be in a better position by the spring. Seeing here today, you said about 75 or so days later. How do you feel about that?
We haven't made the improvement in the last three or four weeks that we had anticipated. As Mark said, the inflection point starts in the second quarter of the spring. I think, Chris, you should think about about 12 weeks of the time between we hire a conductor trainee till that person is on the ground being productive. The classes that we launched in January and February are going to help us in April and May. We will start to see an improvement, I fully anticipate, which leads us to our confidence of what the second half of the year looks like.
Okay. Understood. That's helpful. Mark, when you hear that, how do we sort of layer that into some of your expectations around the cost profile of the business in the first half of the year? I think you've been relatively specific about how you think operating ratio was going to look in the first half. Anything to change about that, or should we still be thinking kind of that low 60-something for the first half?
That was the guidance that we have given. Frankly, it assumed that we would recover quicker on service. We haven't recovered. The volume shortfall is going to be a hard thing to overcome. You need a certain amount of volume to cover the cost that we're seeing. As Alan mentioned, even in the prepared remarks that we showed, it's going to apply pressure to our operating ratio outlook here in the first quarter. Definitely. Hopefully, we're better in the second quarter, but net-net for the first half, it won't be probably as in the sideways range that we guided to back in January. This year, we've got time to make up for that. That's the point. We know the demand environment is really strong right now. It's a buoyant market.
Hopefully, that holds throughout the year, and we'll get the opportunity to make up for what we're missing right now.
Okay. Makes sense. When we think about the full year from a revenue perspective, high single digits is the target there. As we're sitting here, kind of middle of the way, maybe a little bit more through the first quarter, and things have been a little more challenging on the volume side. Any way to sort of think about the mix of yield RPU as well as car loads within that high single digits?
Yeah. We said it was roughly balanced, our guidance is high single digit revenue growth between yield and volume. Certainly, we're missing out on the volume part of that equation right now, but we got time to make up for it. Yield is holding, and that's good news for us. Coal, the pricing that Alan mentioned, is holding. We do expect that that will maybe soften as the year goes on. That's been the expectation all along. Perhaps the geopolitical events that we're reading about mean to hold on a little bit longer. We don't know. The volume outlook right now is soft for us in the first quarter. Again, we're only 50% of the way through the year. I think we got time to make it up in the remaining three quarters.
Okay. Can we talk a little bit about the pricing piece of it? That's one area where we've seen significant strength across the industry following what we've seen in the truckload market, which has been extremely constrained over the course of the last 18 months or so. I think there was a decent amount of repricing that occurred towards the end of the year for you guys. As we move into 1Q, 2Q, how much can pricing kind of help offset some of the challenges that you have in terms of volume and the service?
We are encouraged by the price that we're securing in the market. Improved service will be a lift to that. We had talked about in terms of slight volume and revenue growth in the first half of the year. You can see from the volume chart, we're not delivering that right now. That leads to Mark's comments about pressure on the OR. The pricing environment is really strong for us. That gives us a lot of confidence as we move into the second half of the year, implement the new operating plan, get the right resources in place that we're going to take full advantage of the opportunities that are out there for us.
Got it.
The truck rates continue to go up and provide a good backdrop for us on the pricing side. Frankly, the overall inflationary environment provides also a good backdrop. We have to cover our cost increases as well. I do think it gives our commercial folks more explanation to our customer base on what we need to do with price.
Definitely. Along those lines, when you think about price in the context of intermodal, I know we said service may not be where it needs to be. Has there been more constraint on the domestic intermodal side as a result of the service? I guess maybe if you think about the specific commodities, are there any areas where you're seeing maybe more pressure because of service as opposed to others? As you mentioned, coal seems quite good right now. Intermodal maybe not as good.
Yeah. I don't know. I would not say that. We've delivered year-over-year improvements in RPU, less fuel, and our intermodal franchise for the last 20 consecutive quarters. I think it's 26 out of 27 in merchandise. We take a measured approach to it. When contract rates in the truck market went down in 2019, and in 2020, our rates went up. We're still confident about our ability to price into this market. As Mark noted, there are some aspects that are actually looking a little bit better than what we had thought to start the year.
Yeah. Maybe on that note, with coal showing the strength that it is, obviously, your competitors had some challenges in terms of the export market. Can you just give us a little bit of sense of what you're seeing on the coal side between the domestic utility piece of it and then the export side?
Yeah. The utility stockpiles have continued to decline. That presents well for future stockpile build. I think production has improved a little bit more than what we had thought. Seaborne prices are higher than what we thought. Indonesia put a ban on export coals for about a month. That is about to unwind. China has put a ban on imports for a while with the expectation that it would resume imports after the Winter Olympics. That could support pricing if the Russian Ukraine crisis will probably impact the availability of Russian natural gas into Europe, which means more demand for US thermal coals. There is a lot of opportunity in the coal market. I still consider it a bubble. We are guarded in our outlook. If we are wrong, we will probably be wrong to the upside, which would be fine.
Yeah. I think it's a high-quality problem to have, I guess, in that scenario. Can you talk a little bit, sort of, I want to talk a little bit about supply chain issues and then sort of broader cost inflation. That's obviously been a key topic across the market. Maybe starting with supply chain issues, can you talk about sort of how this impacts Norfolk Southern and your customers specifically? Have we seen any signs of improvement? I think there's been some discussion in the market for the last week or maybe two weeks that maybe there's some signs, but it's a little hard to tell. What's your take?
You are starting to see our intermodal volumes increase sequentially slightly and still nowhere near where it needs to be. I think that could potentially be a reflection of the fact that maybe the drayage capacity is improving slightly. We're impacted by the fact that a lot of the steamship lines, with which we're aligned, are not offering inland port intermodal moves right now. We're leaving it up to the DCAs to come pick it up at the dock. Trying to encourage a quick turnaround transloading, quick turnaround on the containers because the revenue for container day opportunity for them is so high. That's limiting our volume. I think as that starts to unwind, and we're told potentially in the second quarter, if the drayage capacity improves, you'll start to see a real lift in our international volumes.
As our own performance improves, you'll see a lift in domestic intermodal. We've seen some pressure, Chris, in the automotive franchise because of some COVID pressures overseas and the impact that has had on semiconductor chip production. That should improve as we move through the second quarter into the second half of the year. The bigger issue in automotive is equipment terms. Most of it comes back to how quickly we can ramp up our network velocity. I'm confident we've got a plan to do that.
Okay. Got it. There is always a trade-off. The industry has been effective in terms of capturing accessorial and other fee-based revenue around some of the deterioration in asset turns and equipment turns and customers' utilization of your equipment. As you think about the sort of shape of revenue over the course of the year, can you help us a little bit how to think about that? I guess it is very correlated to volume, right? As volume comes back, service begins to ramp up, then you would begin to see some of those come out. That would be coming out, I guess, of yield in some of your underlying categories. Is that right?
The headline number for us in that category was the storage service revenue that we provided. Storage service revenue as a percentage of our revenue base declined from third quarter to fourth quarter. As the drayage community and warehouse community gets healthier, we fully anticipate that that will continue to decline. That will be replaced by more freight revenue.
Yeah. Okay.
More sustainable in the long run anyway.
That is the intermodal RPU where you would see that show up.
Yeah.
Yep. Okay. Makes sense. Then broadly across sort of the inflation sort of picture, a question came in from the webcast asking about sort of how you've been thinking about forecasting inflation and sort of where inflation has been running relative to that forecast. Seems like things kind of got very hot in the back half of the year, and that's cascaded over here into 2022. How have you been thinking about it? What's embedded in the guidance, and where are we?
One area, and I know the question probably really more relates to the P&L, but I'll tell you one area where we've seen it is on the CapEx side because so much of our CapEx is steel-based, not just the rails, which are 100% steel, but chassis and fleet cars and other things that have a lot of steel componentry to it. That's been pretty sharp and acute. I think we've accurately and adequately built that into our CapEx guidance. With regard to the P&L, I mean, I think we've got our comp and ben calibrated to reflect that. We started to talk about inflationary pressures on our purchase services, particularly our lift charges related to intermodal, where we have a lot of contractors who are facing some very severe labor challenges of their own.
We have to make sure that we had a little bit of a pass-through arrangement there to ensure that we do not have labor shortages. Some of the other areas, I think we have properly calibrated, and we will manage to contain the inflation as we go through this year. Fuel is the other thing I guess I want to mention because what I have seen is a $0.60 increase in fuel costs just since the end of the year, $0.60 a gallon. That is pretty significant, pretty meaningful. Obviously, we will have surcharge that covers it, but that does also provide a margin headwind because you can largely think of fuel as a 100% incremental OR type of equation, right? That is probably the area where I would say we are a little bit more surprised, and that has not been baked into our outlook. We will see how long this fuel spike lasts.
When we think about headcount, maybe a shorter-term question, but then a longer-term question, Alan, in terms of where we are and maybe how some of the hiring efforts that you're trying to make might influence where heads might go in the first half and back half, so let's call it 2022. In the bigger picture, the industry has been achieving better efficiency with fewer heads over the last several years. As you look out over your coming tenure as the CEO, how do you think about heads and where we are in the industry and where Norfolk Southern is more specifically, and how does that influence your prospects for growth?
I think, Chris, that as we implement TOP|SPG and we're focused on improving train size, train weight, and train balance, it gives us the opportunity to be much more efficient with labor. Labor could very well be a pretty tight resource for a bit, right? I mean, our labor force participation rate is pretty low right now by historical numbers. That provides the opportunity for us to be more efficient and then less prone to service disruptions.
Okay. When you think about this year, any changes to the way you guys are thinking about heads?
Yeah. What we had talked about is that our average employee count would be flat with last year. We're still looking at that.
Got it. Makes sense. You mentioned TOP|SPG. I guess there's a question that came in from the webcast about maybe some things that TOP|SPG improved upon versus TOP21. Are there any specific instances that you can think of or circumstances where the new operating plan might be able to sort of improve upon what you guys were executing on under the old operating plan?
Yeah. Mark had a really sharp chart which showed improvements in train weight and train length. We know that we still have a lot more opportunity to implement improvements there. I fully anticipate that that is going to be an outcome of TOP|SPG. In addition to that, that is probably going to drive improvements in fuel efficiency as well. Those are two areas that Norfolk Southern needs to improve.
Yeah. Remember, Chris, our commodity mix, since we did our TOP21 operating plan redesign, there were three phases of that that we hit largely in 2019 and a little bit into 2020. Our commodity mix has changed quite a bit. Our volume profile has changed. Even our yard structure has changed and closed a couple of humps since then. It is time to really take a fresh look at our overall network and our traffic patterns and where our mix and movements are. Really, the whole TOP|SPG plan, we're going at it from the clean sheet approach of given all these traffic flows and the profiles and recognizing that we want to be able to have better train balance, less labor intensity, meaning having longer trains and heavier trains, but also executability.
We have got to be able to execute on the train plan that we put in place. Those three things, let's look at it freshly. That is really what the team, we have got an incredible cross-functional team that is spending every day together trying to figure out what the best course of action is. We should have some results here in the coming months.
Taking a step back and thinking bigger picture, the last several years, you've made meaningful strides on the operating ratio, as you pointed out, success with getting through 60 OR. As you're taking over the business and thinking about the next kind of five years or so, how do you balance sort of the demands, let's call it volume growth on one hand and operating ratio improvement on the other? I think from an investment standpoint, we obviously want to see both. That has at times been a challenge for the industry at large. How do you think about that, Alan, as you're looking out over the course of the next several years and how you're prioritizing some of these initiatives?
Yeah. It's a very good and valid question. We have made great improvements in our OR. We understand that we've narrowed the gap with the rest of our industry peers in OR. We still have a little bit more room to go, right? That's when we talk about TOP|SPG. It is a balance, right? It's service, it's productivity, and growth. We've got a franchise for a number of reasons that is positioned at the face of growth in the U.S. economy. We're going to leverage that. At the same time, we're going to improve our operating plan so that we are more efficient. As Mark noted, we're going to improve our operating plan so that it's executable on a daily basis and consistent on a daily basis. That will provide a better service product.
Over the long run, is there any reason to think that Norfolk Southern's operating ratio would be meaningfully different than some of the other large Class I rails in the U.S.?
Yeah. We're intently focused on narrowing the gap with our peers and taking a balanced approach to growing our revenue and reflecting the value of the product that we deliver through RPU and yield.
Got it. Okay. I want to get some questions that came in from the webcast. Jumping back to sort of the commodity outlook for a moment, I forgot to ask about this. I wanted to get your sense on auto. Obviously, a large franchise for you in the East. I want to get a sense of how do you sort of think about the potential opportunity for that to ramp up as we go through 2022?
Yeah. The feedback that we're getting from our customers is it really does start to ramp up as we unwind these semiconductor issues moving through the second quarter and into the second half of the year. Clearly, demand is far outstripped supply right now. We got to get our network rolling, and we got to get the production back up to where it needs to be.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Maybe in the last couple of minutes here, talk a little bit about what you think the railroad needs from a capital perspective. Obviously, there's multiple ways to think about this. Obviously, top line operating ratio, and then ultimately what you're doing with capital and free cash flow, which has gotten significantly better over the last many years. How do we think about that? What's kind of the run rate, CapEx, or any specific areas or projects or things that you want to spend money on?
Yeah. I'll talk about specific projects, and then Mark, you can talk about kind of the run rate. We're focused on improving and lengthening some of our sidings on our core route, particularly the north-south route. As we run longer trains, we're going to need that. We want ratable investments in what we consider to be our growth markets, particularly in our intermodal terminals and our facilities, and then project-driven growth within our merchandise network, and then continued investment in technology, like we talked about with NS Sites, to make us easier to do business with and help us take traffic off the highway.
I would say most paramount for us is just to make sure we maintain resiliency and safety in our network. Roughly half of our CapEx today is channeled in that area: rail replacement program, ties, and ballast. That, of course, is subject to inflation, so that will continue to probably have a little bit of growth every year in the overall budget. The other half of the things that Alan kind of mentioned, more and more as we're looking at the operating plan redesign, we've identified sidings opportunities that can unlock some of the constraints we have in certain parts of our network. The southern part of our network in particular is a lot of single track, and that's where a lot of the traffic growth is. We have to unlock some of the constraints that we have.
We have, I think, eight siding programs that are in place today, eight siding extensions that should be going live throughout the course of the year. I am very happy about the money we are putting in there. We have done the math on it to make sure that it makes sense, and it makes a lot of sense, the returns on things like that. Meanwhile, chassis is another example where we found ourselves short of chassis, in part due to increased street flow. Still, just growth and intermodal will be there going forward. We have to make sure that we keep our chassis fleet replenished and strong. We are putting money into chassis. Of course, our DC to AC locomotive improvement plan or upgrade plan has been very, very successful for us.
We continue to put more and more money into that to get more of our fleet getting toward 80% of our fleet up to AC. I do expect that the numbers that we gave, the $1.8 billion-$1.9 billion of capital for 2022, will probably be the new floor for sure. The level of growth, we're going to try to be responsible and contain it because I would like to maintain healthy free cash flow conversions.
Is a percent of revenue the right way to think about that? We've always struggled with that, and I don't necessarily believe that it is. When you think about that $1.8 billion-$1.9 billion as the floor, is it just sort of inflationary type growth from there matched to revenue growth, matched to carload growth? What's the best way to think about it?
I've struggled coming into this industry because the percent of revenue is kind of the standard that people talk about. That's alien to me, coming out of industrial products and some of the other industries that I've played in. I think right now we look at the CapEx level that we have, and I think it feels right. It happens to maybe coincidentally be in that mid-teen range. I would like to correlate it at this point to inflation and needs and really look at our free cash flow conversion as a governor.
Got it. Okay. That is great. We are out of time. Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Chris. Thank you, everyone.