All right. We're going to get started with our next fireside chat with Norfolk Southern. Very excited to have them here in Nashville with us today. Presenting for the company to my left here, we've got Mark George, CFO; Alan Shaw, CMO. I think Mark is going to lead off with some prepared remarks. Alan may, may chime in as well. Then we'll get into Q&A that I'll moderate, and I'm going to open it up to questions in the audience as well. With that, Mark, I'll turn it to you, and thanks again for being here.
Thank you, Justin. Great to be here. Actually, Alan and I will collectively share some slides with you. We'll start with the normal housekeeping. The presentation slides are available on our website, so you can find them there, along with the reconciliation of non-GAAP and GAAP measures. Both Alan and I will make some forward-looking statements today, so please be sure to refer to the website and any SEC filing so you understand our risk factors. The first slide you'll see here, just a real quick highlight. I mean, we had a very strong Q3. As you'll recall from the earnings call, we set a number of records, third-quarter records in the quarter, namely operating ratio, net income, income from raw operations, as well as free cash flow. Revenues were actually up 14% on flat volumes, with really strong RPU growth in the quarter.
We contained OpEx growth to 10%, so that led to a very strong drop-through in the quarter, very strong incremental margins. We had 230 basis points of margin expansion in the quarter itself, and it brought our OR down to a record low of 60.2%. Income from railway operations, as I mentioned, was a record as a result of all of that. We converted all that income from the income momentum, income momentum that we have. We converted it to very strong free cash flow. I think our free cash flow conversion through nine months is over 100% right now. We are benefiting from a little bit of delay in CapEx spending, but very strong free cash flow, conversion right now. That is two years in a row, and we feel really good about our cash generation profile here.
We had a 33% increase in free cash flow, actually, year to date. If you turn to slide four, you can kind of see the journey here that we've been on since the middle of 2019, where we launched our Top 21 operating plan. We've been building out our trains longer and heavier, creating a lot of operational leverage. You can see the double-digit improvements in both train weight and train length in that time period. In the process, we've made a number of structural changes to the network to adapt to the demand flows. That's really enabled us to make these trains longer, reduce crew starts, is a fall on from that. We are enjoying it all, and it drops through as a 60.2% operating ratio in the third quarter, good sequential and consistent improvement in our OR since the middle of 2019.
The results are pretty evident, and we've got plenty of runway for future productivity in here as well. We feel good about our prospects in the long term. Of course, technology is going to play a role in the next phase of continuing to drive productivity in the railroad. We're putting a lot of focus on trying to improve our predictive analytics, failure prevention, and even planning for our maintenance. We've got a lot of technology that's going to play into this, as well as siding extensions that will allow even longer trains, as we deal with meets. Now, let's turn to slide six. You know, a lot's been written about our network and service challenges. Look, network fluidity had been improving going into the third quarter. We actually saw a 3% improvement in train speed, and dwell had improved 1%.
We felt good about our progress in the third quarter. However, as we discussed on the call in late October, as we talked about our earnings, we were seeing some quarter-to-date deterioration in our numbers. We talked about the fact that we were losing people. We had some pretty significant attrition that was going on in some key locations. We are suffering from that right now. To offer just a bit of perspective on this, we have about a dozen locations on our network that have about 50% more attrition in the last seven months than we would have expected in a full year. Our first order of business right now is really to replenish crews in those critical locations and do that as quickly as possible because we have to get the momentum back on the network, increase our fluidity again.
Let's talk a little bit about the action plans we're doing, the solutions that we're focused on right now. There's really five levers that we've been pulling, and we continue to pull hard on. Very simply, we have got to increase our hiring levels, and we've been doing that progressively throughout the year. We actually doubled our hiring rate since July. We've tripled it since the first quarter hiring rates. So we're putting a lot of emphasis on hiring. We've got more active conductor trainees than at any point throughout the course of the year right now in our training pipeline. We've been increasing our class sizes, all of that. So we've got good momentum on the hiring side. There is a timeline involved in all of this. That kind of leads us to the second.
You know, right now, it takes us about 10 weeks to get people through a training class. That's been compressed. It was a little bit longer, but we've done a good job compressing that. We've also got to compress the amount of time it takes us to hire people and start getting them into the classrooms because that also takes, you know, 8-10 weeks. We've taken some weeks out of that as well. You know, we continue to look for ways to shorten that timeline. Meanwhile, we are pursuing multiple avenues to stem attrition. We're using a lot of incentives, hiring bonuses, retention bonuses, availability bonuses. We're even buying back vacation to keep people active. We're doing a lot there. Fourth, we're continuing to try to drive productivity into our network.
One of the solutions here is obviously to continue to make our trains longer. Actually, month to date, we've done a good job of driving the length up about 9% so far. That is through, quarter to date, actually. We are working to resize our train plan actively, but there are some limits when you have a congested network. It is one of the levers we continue to work on. Clearly, that is one of the longer-term levers that will help us drive more productivity into the railroad. Fifth, you know, we're working real hard to optimize our crews. We've got a fair amount of critical locations that we're focused on where we're taking our go-teams. These are mobile employees that we can move from one location to another.
We've put about 50% of our go-team population already in those sensitive areas, which is largely in the Midwest, Midwest, and the Gulf. We're also trying to increase our headcount of go-teams. You've got to have people who are willing to be mobile. Where we can, we're increasing that population. We're also looking at more creative things like reorganizing some of our crew districts to make some of the transitions a little bit easier and to better optimize the availability of our crews. In some cases, in the short term, we're actually routing around some of the more critical locations to avoid the absence of crews. We've temporarily introduced a little bit of circuity to resolve some of the short-term pressures that we're having. Really, this is the mosaic. It's five levers that we're trying to manage this situation with.
I just want to be very, very clear, and Alan will reiterate this. We are highly focused on getting our network fluid again and moving with speed and serving our customers. The entire management team is focused on it, and it is our highest priority. With that, let me hand it over to Alan, and you can talk more about the markets and what we're doing longer-term on growth.
Thanks, Mark. We'll flip to the next slide. You know, you take a look at our volume trends for the quarter. It's, they're weak. We're not happy with the business that we're handling right now. That's a reflection of our own throughput capacity and some supply chain headwinds that we're seeing. Demand in just about every market that we serve is exceptional right now. You know, we feel really confident that it will remain that way, to start 2022. You take a look at the individual markets. Our chemicals volume is up 15%. We're seeing strength in energy products. Not a surprise to anybody, right? We're seeing strength in NGLs and in crude oil and in frac sand. We're also seeing strength in waste shipments. That's been a growth market for us over the last year or two as consumption patterns change.
You know, the consumer continues to improve its own throughput and its own purchasing. We're seeing waste shipments move a little bit more. I think that's going to be an area in which rail in Norfolk Southern can benefit in the long term. Metals, you know, you see what's happening in the metals market. Prices have come down a little bit, but they're still near historical highs. There is a lot of demand for metals. You know, we're really encouraged about where metals could potentially head as you think about the infrastructure package and the automotive industry continuing to recover. Coal is up slightly. That is a function of coal supply. Demand out there is white hot, whether that's domestic in the youth thermal market and the domestic met market or overseas in both thermal and domestic met.
That's reflected in coal prices. Our ag volumes have been pressured by network fluidity, as has intermodal. Intermodal volume, or intermodal demand, I should say, is incredibly hot. We see pressure from our own network fluidity. We see pressure from chassis availability, which we're working very hard to address. We see pressure from the drayage community and warehousing throughput. We have started taking delivery of the lease chassis that we had talked about. We were going to take 1,100 in the fourth quarter. We're on target to receive those chassis. We've also teed up additional chassis purchases for next year. We're pulling on all the levers that we can, including network fluidity, to improve our capacity and our service product within the intermodal network. As I think about the headwinds we're facing, some of them are external.
Some of them are internal that we need to address. You know, we've talked about the chip shortage. That seems to be getting a little bit better, and we're starting to hear confidence from our OEMs that we serve that we might be through the worst of that. Inventory levels and that network finished vehicle inventory levels still remain near all-time lows. You know, I don't know if any of you have been on a car lot recently, but there is, there's nothing there. That's going to be a boost for us in 2022 because of our best-in-class industrial development team. We serve more North American vehicle production than any other railroad. As that recovers, we feel really confident in our ability to participate in that and drive shareholder value. Port congestion remains an issue.
We're starting to see that a little bit on East Coast ports, but we're working with those ports to offer a solution to get boxes off the terminals, whereas the ultimate BCO or the warehouse might not even be ready for because of congestion there. You know, we've talked about our accessorial charges, our storage service program in international, where we are offering the ability of steamship lines and customers to store boxes on Norfolk Southern property. That's a service that we've provided. We charge for it through our accessorials. That's how it's reflected in our income statement. It is a service that we're providing, and it's something that the market values. You can see that through the money that we've collected there.
Ultimately, what will happen, we firmly believe, is throughput capacity, whether it's the drayage network or the warehouse network, is going to improve. Accessorial charges will decline, but we'll have more throughput in freight revenue. That is something that we're all looking forward to. I mentioned the chassis investment within intermodal. We've recently opened two new, reopened two intermodal terminals that we had previously idled, reflecting the increased demand for our service product. We continue to focus on highway to rail conversion opportunities. We've talked about our Thoroughbred freight transfer program, which offers a kind of a hybrid boxcar intermodal product to serve the underserved LTL market, which is effectively out of capacity because of the rise of e-commerce. Sustainability is another driver for highway to rail conversions.
We've had much more meaningful conversations with our customers in the last 18 months about sustainability. Now what you're starting to see is the sustainability officers within our customers are becoming more linked with the logistics officers. It is becoming a focal point of conversation with our customers. When you think about rail, rail has a number of advantages, relative to trucks. Sustainability is one, cost is one, and capacity is another one. We are really confident that as the economy continues to recover in 2022 and our service improves and our capacity improves, we are going to see fairly strong growth. This is probably the best time to work on productivity. You know, we're really stressed with our crews. We're really stressed by the number of trains that are out there.
It gives the whole organization a common focal point on improving our productivity, which ultimately will result in structural cost changes for us, which is going to help us grow and become more efficient. Now, the number of things that we're doing, we're obviously focused on network velocity that improves the cycle time of the equipment, our equipment and our customers' equipment, which means we have more payload capacity. We're investing in siding extensions. You know, when Cindy came in and joined us about 15 months ago, she looked at our network and highlighted a need to do that because ultimately our goal is to run longer trains. To run longer trains and make more efficient meets and run trains on time, we need to invest in sidings. We are actively doing that.
We've got another one scheduled to come online this year and a couple teed up for next year. Mark talked a lot about what we're doing to optimize our utilization of our train crews and increase the flexibility that we have with the utilization of those crews. We're focused on yard efficiency. I can see that directly within the intermodal terminals as we're rolling out new technology, a terminal optimization system to make our terminals more efficient. Mark and his team have helped us renegotiate a number of contracts with our terminal lift contractors to incent efficiency and share in those benefits and also incent a better service product as well.
We've got a number of initiatives going on right now, spearheaded by the situation that we're in, such that everyone at Norfolk Southern is very much focused on how to make ourselves more productive because there's two ways that we're going to climb out of this. One, we're going to add crews in a couple of areas, which Mark talked about. The other is we're going to make structural improvements in our productivity and our efficiency. The look for the fourth quarter is very similar to what we saw in the third quarter. Industrial production continues to improve, and the outlook for industrial production for next year continues to improve as well. Inventory levels, whether you're talking about wholesale or retail, are near historic lows.
I saw a stat the other day that the inventory rebuild for next year is projected at about $100 billion. That's what's required. Inventories came down $75 billion this year, $35 billion in 2020. That in and of itself, I think, provides a lot of opportunity for demand for rail. I feel like Norfolk Southern is uniquely positioned because of the strength of our intermodal franchise, which is parked adjacent to the consumer. There is more and more manufacturing in the east. There is more onshoring in the east. Our industrial development team and our real estate team see that as well. The intermodal market, as I noted, is white hot. We've seen estimates that truck utilization is going to be at 97% next year. I was with a trucking firm in Pittsburgh earlier this month, and they've got 500 trucks, but they've got 400 drivers.
They went out to try and purchase 60 cabs next year, and they can only get 20. There is not going to be a quick rebound, I do not think, in the trucking industry. Within coal, as I noted, there is high demand overseas. Therm or Metcoal was at $435 a metric ton, which is just like off the charts. I mean, we had to change the scale of our graph. It dropped down to $350 in the last couple of weeks as China has taken in the warehoused coal from Australia, but they are not accepting new shipments, right? There is still, and that is still at historical highs. Incredible demand there, incredible demand for thermal coal. As you take a look at LNG prices in Europe, it is over $30 today.
This time last year it was about five, right?
There's a real need for BTUs in Europe as well. That's impacting the demand for U.S. coals. You know, the pressure comes from coal supply.
Coal producers are dealing with the same thing everybody else is with respect to labor. Then there's the question of access to capital there as well.
You know, I'll close with a couple of comments about our outlook. Mark and I will be more than happy to take any questions that you have, Justin. We feel really confident in reiterating our full-year guidance. Our year-over-year revenue growth is going to be over 12%. More importantly, we'll have a 400-400 basis point improvement in OR. You know, just go back to like 2015.
That's well over a 1,200 basis point improvement in operating ratio since 2015. And we've got more room to go. We know we do. We're very confident in that. We know that's our charge. That's a focal point for us. Mark has talked about our capital allocation strategy, and he keeps a tight hand on that. I can tell you that. We're reiterating that guidance as well. We're confident in our ability to close out this year. We're confident in our ability to improve our service product and get it back to targeted levels. We're confident in what 2022 looks like.
Okay. Great. That's all really helpful. We'll jump into questions. Maybe to start with one on the last point about the reiteration of guidance. I was, I was a bit surprised, honestly, to hear that after your comments around the volume environment being weaker than you thought, the labor challenges. What, what's the positive offset for some of these headwinds that you face quarter to date?
We're seeing, you know, we're seeing improvements in, in our, in our RPU. The market is, is strong right now. We haven't really seen much of a change in our accessorials. And, you know, our network is, our network fluidity is impacting our volumes. There's no doubt it did in November, and I fully expect it to in December. I still are very confident that we'll be able to hit our full-year guidance.
Okay. That, that RPU strength, is it broad-based? Is a big chunk of that coming from export coal? You mentioned some of the numbers that have been, you know, very, very high levels.
Yeah. And you should, it is broad-based. You should also recognize, you know, a lot of it's mix, right?
Right.
Export coal relative to domestic coal is, is typically has a higher RPU. We're also seeing strength from fuel surcharge. We're seeing strength from accessorials. We are seeing strength from price as well.
Okay. And maybe one on labor, and then I'll open it up if there's questions in the audience. But a very incrementally more kind of challenging environment, it seems like here in, in the fourth quarter. It, it's a bit interesting because I've heard from some other companies in the transportation market that the labor situation seems more stable, maybe improving. Can you just kind of give us some more color on what you think the problem is right now, what, why you've seen this challenge in the fourth quarter, and maybe where you need to get to from a headcount perspective to return to normal fluidity versus where we are today?
The pace of attrition in the labor force has just been building or accelerating throughout the year. I mean, the attrition rates that we experienced in the first quarter were in line with what we thought we could absorb and offset with productivity. They kind of stepped up a little bit in the second quarter at a higher rate, and now the third quarter was yet even higher, outpacing our ability to kind of keep up.
I mean, the real answer is, look, Norfolk Southern is a great place to work. We have a great comp package. We have a very attractive retirement plan as part of the Railroad Retirement Act. It's an outdoor sport. You know, it's, it's, you're choosing to work in a railroad, and you've got now a job market that offers everything under the sun. People have a lot of options. What we're finding is that people are really making decisions to either leave or not to join based on lifestyle, largely based on lifestyle. Trucking is white hot, like Alan said. That draws a little bit. You've got Amazon warehousing popping up all over the place. You've got a really hot housing market as well.
A lot of these people have the skills to go into various different disciplines, and all of those job markets are hot. That's what really we're competing against right now. Earlier on, for sure, we had challenges with maybe people being incentivized to stay on the sidelines and collect unemployment. I think that that's probably a little bit less of the challenge right now. Really, it's people making lifestyle choices. I think you can read a lot about that. You know, I think Wall Street Journal published something on that a week or so ago as well that, you know, in this post-COVID world, people are choosing different ways to live their life and work-life balance is part of that. That's really, I think, what we're dealing with.
We're making things a little bit more, we're adapting, we're making things a little bit more attractive as well internally. Like I said, we're providing some incentives. We're addressing it in a number of different ways. And, you know, I, we've increased our absolute hiring, trying to anticipate further attrition and hopefully bend the curve here.
Okay. And roughly how many people would you say that you need to hire in order to get kind of caught up and dig out of this hole?
It's really hard to put a fine point on it because it's a moving target. You know, we constantly have attrition, so we're trying to hire in advance of attrition. And then remember the timeline. This is, you know, all in. It's like a four-and-a-half-month process from when you, when you hire somebody, when you target somebody to when they're boots on the ground. I would say we're feeling the most pain in, you know, a dozen or so critical locations, but there are more locations that are tight as well. It's really hard to put a fine point on the number of people that would help dig us out.
Okay. The hope now is, thinking about that four-and-a-half-month timeline, maybe second quarter of next year, we could get back to something that's more normal from a fluidity perspective. Is that a fair way to think about it?
We certainly hope so, but we're going to try to move the needle a lot faster than that.
I think, yeah, I think the uncertainties in there, Justin, are continued attrition and the vaccine mandate.
Yeah. That was one of my questions, so I'll go ahead and ask it. Impact, impact from vaccine mandate, any thoughts around that percentage of employees that are vaccinated today? Just help us put that in perspective.
Go ahead.
Yeah. I mean, we're not going to go out there with a number, the numbers that are vaccinated or not vaccinated. But I can just tell you, we spent a long time really assessing what rule we had to follow. It became clear, after reviewing things with our legal department and assessing things, that we are clearly a federal contractor.
We move tanks and Humvees for the military, and there was really no way for us to carve out certain segments of the business and say, "Okay, only you are a federal contractor." Unfortunately, you know, we viewed ourselves as really no escaping the fact that we're a federal contractor. We are working with our employee base to make sure that they understand the implications and what it takes to seek accommodations, whether it's medical or sincerely held religious beliefs. In the meantime, we were working very closely with the government relations group, in the White House to try to get them to understand that we don't want to be exacerbating already what are big supply chain problems that are existing in this country. I think that in part our efforts, along with other companies, are why the White House extended the deadlines into January.
We're going to continue to have that dialogue as we work with our employee base. Really, we're going to find every angle we can to make sure that it doesn't provide further disruption. It's a risk for sure. Again, we're actually working hand in hand with our employees who are still, in some cases, reticent to get vaccinated. We'll get through this together. We're trying to take a pragmatic approach, and I think that the White House ultimately will be pragmatic as well because I don't think anybody wants to see further disruption to the transportation ecosystem.
Do you think this is at all playing a role in the labor challenges you're seeing today?
Maybe a little bit, but I think the bigger risk is to come. The extension of the timeline certainly has helped a little bit.
Question here.
You know, transportation's an asset-based network operating business. So there are a lot of similarities. You look at the ocean business, and economies of scale on line haul have destroyed all the landside economies. In fact, bigger ships are causing more problems, right? The A380 is a bust.
Mm-hmm.
You're talking about running longer trains, but what happens, [you know, on an intermodal when they can't get into the terminal?] Yeah. Look, you can extend the sidings if you don't extend the terminals, but what's the plan?
It's really about the throughput through the terminals. We have to be faster to get things through the terminals. What's different about the A380 and what's different about the larger container ships, versus trains is trains are scalable. So we don't, we're not forced to always run extremely long trains.
We can run trains in increments based on the locomotive pulling capacity. The longer we can make them, the fewer crew resources we need to draw upon. There are times, you know, and there are routes in our network where we may not run very long trains because we have terminal capacity issues. The good news is that for us, it's scalable. We're not building one long train that's always there. It varies hour to hour, day to day. We can build it up in the course of a route and trim it down and cut it as we navigate through the network. I don't know if you want to add anything.
Yeah. Ted, as you know, the folks who designed our terminal network and had that strategic vision designed one in which we got pad tracks and then we got support tracks at every one of our terminals. I'm not sure that's the case everywhere, right? You probably know better than me. We can run long trains. When we run them on time, they can land in the support tracks and not create issues. We're not having issues with intermodal trains stacked up on line of road. You know, our issues have been, and you know this, they've been train performance. They've been availability of terminal contractors because, as Mark said, that's the same labor pool that everyone else is drawing from. Mark and his team helped us refine our lift contracts. It's been chassis availability.
We're addressing that as well. We're pulling hard on all three levers, which is train performance, the terminal contractors, and chassis. What the longer trains do is it allows us to be more profitable with intermodal, which means our board is more and more interested in investing in continued growth for intermodal.
We're all for that. The problem is when you yard it on the support track instead of yarding it on the ramp track, and your efficiency program got rid of the switch group that would have switched those over, then you got a challenge. You're right. They're not line of road problems, but there are getting up and down problems.
I think that DEX goes back to we need to be a little bit stronger on that crew resource, right, so that when we need that switch, we can get it.
Any other questions in the audience?
I wanted to ask one about pricing. I believe about half of your business will renew here in the fourth quarter and the first quarter. I would guess, given the demand environment you described, and we've heard about the pace of price increases should be accelerating. Inflation's going up too.
Right.
When you look at the spread between pricing and inflation, do you feel like that gap expands as we get into next year, or does it narrow? How are you thinking about that?
You know, Justin, as you know, we price the market. It's a really strong market in which to price. We have demonstrated that by having 18 or 19 consecutive quarters in RPU growth in intermodal year-over-year and 25 and 26 within merchandise. You know, I think the only concern that I've got with price next year is associated in that export coal market. It's just really hard for me to put down on something on paper and commit to Mark that export coal prices are going to stay at $350 a metric ton. Right.
Right.
I am not assuming that. That means we are pulling down our price in the export coal market. Hey, if it remains where it is, then that's upside for us. You know, our focus on yield management, we have demonstrated it, and this is a good environment in which to price.
Okay. How much visibility would you say at this point you have in terms of coal RPU staying at these strong levels moving into next year?
Through first quarter.
Okay. Ted's got another question. Right here.
Related to that, what's, I know it's hard, but what's your forecast on fuel? Because that might go from a cost and a competitive position to truck. Do you have a, I mean, it's, it's a big market, but do you have a sense on what's going to happen?
Yeah. We don't try to forecast fuel internally. We look at, you know, the forward curve, and the forward curve has it going down, next year, particularly in the first quarter. It's hard to see that, supply, the supply and demand, demand imbalance right now is going to take itself or fix itself in the first quarter. Again, there's upside there. If fuel remains strong, then that's more demand for our product as well. [That's what I was trying to sense.]
Yeah. I think there's upside there.
Because, you know, the oil producers have been really disciplined. You know, you're not seeing a lot of fracking capacity coming back on. You might be seeing a little bit more in the Marcellus region, but that's natural. That's natural. That's dry gas, right? You're not really seeing the crude oil out west. I'm sure it has to do with just a change in philosophy. You know, it used to be barrels over profits. And frankly, we benefited from that when, you know, we were running 100,000 cartons of crude oil in 2014. You know, we don't see that now.
That is, we are really not incorporating that kind of volume or what is going on with this lower fuel price into our forecast.
Maybe one on volumes, Alan. I think you made the comment that you are expecting growth in 2022. What we have heard from some of the other rails this morning is the bogey is IDP with the goal of growing volumes above industrial production. Is that a fair way to think about Norfolk Southern's volume framework for next year as well? If that is the case, you know, how much capacity do you have to handle volume growth like that given the current labor situation?
Our volume next year is going to be dependent upon the inventory rebuild and how quickly we fix service. I can tell you over the long term that in our industrial markets, we should be looking at IDP. In the intermodal market, we should be looking at a multiple of GDP.
Okay. In terms of the inventory restock, any thoughts around the timing of how long that could take based on the feedback that you're hearing from your customers and IMC partners right now?
Yeah. I think it hasn't started yet, right? It keeps getting pushed back. I would expect you're talking late 2022, maybe early 2023.
It really depends how long this current demand cycle pulls from production. You know, right now, demand is still red hot. You end up having, you're just basically feeding the beast with production just feeding demand, and there's no inventory replenishment that's happening.
Even, you know, if demand really does fall off a cliff, you're going to still have a good year of inventory replenishment that will fuel production.
Are there any areas where demand is weak right now? It feels like there are a lot of up arrows, even coal. As we go into next year, anything that you're worried about as a down arrow?
No. There really isn't. I mean, there's a less strong green arrow, right? I don't think there's, with respect to demand, any down arrows. There might be a supply issue associated with the ultimate demand, which could limit volumes. I don't, I can't think of anything where inventories are flush right now.
For what it's worth, that's a three for three on the same answer. Good. The fireside chat so far. On the labor situation, I wanted to circle back to kind of warehouse workers as well because I think, Alan, on the last call, you said something about warehouse capacity needing to be 25% higher than it is today. How much of that is a labor issue versus an infrastructure issue, and any update on the progression there?
You know, it would be easy to say a lot of it's labor because we're seeing that in other areas. Then you take a look at the demand for warehouse builds, right? That tells you, that tells me that it's also a physical capacity issue as well. I was talking to an economic development partner two weeks ago who's in that space, and he told me that, you know, he looked at, he calls them NFL cities and then second tier cities, right? He’s looking at big metropolitan areas, and he's looking for any parcel of flat land that's over an acre. He said that's going for $7,000-$20,000 a month, which he says puts the valuation at well over a million dollars for an acre of land, because of the demand for warehouse builds. You know, that's one of the things, Justin, that we've talked about is that the pandemic has accelerated some trends in the economy. I think one of them is forward positioning of inventory next to the consumer, which is warehouses. The other is e-commerce, which is warehouses and intermodal, right?
E-commerce is very intermodal intensive. I think onshoring, you know, we're dealing with a lot of customers. Our pipeline right now for industrial development projects is at a level that exceeds all the projects that we've landed in the last 10 years combined. Now, we're not going to get all those projects in the pipeline, but that gives you an indication of the demand for manufacturing and warehousing next to the consumer, which is one of the unique advantages of our network.
As you think about capturing market share from truck and conversion activity, do you feel like there's still an opportunity to do that next year, even if service doesn't get materially better versus where it is today? Do we need to see service return to kind of fluid levels in order to get that conversion activity?
Yeah. I'm not going to entertain a scenario in which service doesn't get better than it is today, right? Service will get better than it is today. As that happens, we will take more business off the highways. We, it's a cost advantage, it's a capacity advantage, and it's a sustainability advantage. You couple that with an efficient, reliable service, and you layer on top of that a strong customer service environment, there's a lot of demand for rail. It's not just intermodal. Intermodal is the one that, you know, everyone thinks about, but, you know, there's a highway conversion opportunity in multi-levels and gondolas and certainly in boxcars.
Okay. You mentioned a few things that have changed during the pandemic. One that I might throw in there too is just technology and the need for technology investments going forward. Maybe that is a good way to kind of wrap this up. I would love to kind of hear your plans for technology investments moving into next year and beyond and where you see the most opportunity.
Mark, you are teed up on the productivity initiatives with respect to technology. I will just talk about some of the customer-facing technology because that is, we are all consumers, right? We have a business, but now all of our interactions with our customers is B2C. We are continuing to invest in our customer-facing technology to make it easier to do business with us. We are revisioning our intermodal customer interface and technology.
We've put out a mobile app for our customers to track and trace their cars. We're putting out a mobile app for our employees, the 8,000 folks that we've got out in the field, which allows them to input work events real time, which then cascades into much better technology, much better visibility for our customers as well. Of course, you know, we're focused on growth. We are also really focused on productivity because we know what we have to do with OR. We are looking at a number of productivity initiatives as well with technology.
Yeah. We're doing an awful lot, also on the data science side. We're doing a, we've got great technology that allows for automated train inspections and machine vision, which is really proving to be exceptional in terms of safety and quality and reliability.
That's one of the bigger areas that we're really starting to build out, a lot on the data science side. We've got the traditional, typical productivity tools that we're building, system-wise, that help our employees be more productive in terms of the way they report out their hours when we're pulling them into how they need to be reporting into the trains for calls. There are a number of initiatives we got out there. You know, I think between productivity and on the customer relation side, customer service side, it's a good solid pipeline for the next two, three years.
Great, that's good to hear. I'm going to try to keep us on time, so we'll end it there. Thanks so much for being here today. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Justin.
Take care.