Hi everyone, and welcome back to California's 14th Annual Global Transportation and Sustainable Mobility Conference. I'm one of your hosts, Jason Seidl, a Senior Transport Analyst. With me today, I am pleased and honored once again to have Norfolk Southern present. Representing Norfolk Southern, we have Alan Shaw, Chief Marketing Officer, and Mark George, Chief Financial Officer. They have a presentation they're going to run through, and then we're going to hit some Q&A. I'll remind investors that if you want to ask a question from Alan or Mark, you can do so over the Zoom app, and I'll see it and I'll ask it for you. Alternatively, you could email me at jason.seidl@cowen.com, and I'll try to get to it. Gentlemen, please go ahead.
Hey, thank you, Jason. Good morning to everyone out there. We'll start today just with the usual housekeeping. You know, we have some presentation slides we're going to share on the screen, but they are also available on our website along with a reconciliation of non-GAAP to comparable GAAP measures. We will make certain forward-looking statements today, and those are subject to risks and uncertainties, so they may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our website and the SEC filings for additional information about our risk factors. Okay, Jason, with that, you know, as you know from our second quarter earnings call, we reported a solid set of results on slide three here, which really included record performance for net income, EPS, operating income, and operating ratio, which we delivered an all-time best 58.3% in the quarter.
Of course, with the shutdown-related comparisons, we saw a dramatic year-over-year improvement in both revenue and volume of 34% and 25% respectively. We did manage to limit growth in expenses to only 11%. That resulted in great leverage in the quarter and was the reason behind driving our operating ratio down over 1,200 basis points. We were very happy to break through the 60% operating ratio mark in the quarter. Contributing to the significant year-over-year and sequential improvement in the OR was about 200 basis points from an outsized land gain that we had in the quarter. Really, no matter how you slice it or look at it, our guidance was to get to a 60% OR run rate by the end of the year, and we got there ahead of schedule here in Q2. We are very happy about that.
Key to the OR improvement story really comes from the productivity gains that we've been consistently driving into the company since the 2019 launch of our Top 21 operating plan. If you turn to slide four, you'll see workforce productivity measured as GTMs per employee has been a strong driver over the past 2+ years now. That continued in the second quarter. The measure is up 22% since the third quarter of 2019. There is a direct correlation with the 660 basis point improvement in the operating ratio during that same stretch. Our workforce is actually down 23% since the starting point. In the past year, our workforce is down 8%. That's in a period where we actually handled 25% more volume. That really resulted in a significant OR improvement versus last year in Q2.
Now, building our trains longer and heavier is the key to drive the productivity result. You will see that illustrated on slide five. We reported another quarter of double-digit improvement in train weight and length, both of which are now at record levels, Jason. Over this time, we have also made a number of strategic changes to the network, including the closure of six hump operations. We have also made a significant number of changes to our train plan, iterating rather frequently to enable us to build longer and heavier trains. That, of course, results in fewer crew starts, and that results in smaller headcount requirements. Our active locomotive count as well is also down 20%. Our fuel efficiency has improved between 2% and 6% in each of the past seven quarters. Of course, technology is also playing a key role in our productivity gains.
Trip Optimizer is one tool we have in the locomotives that really helps fuel further efficiency there. We've got automated train inspections technology that we're actively deploying that gives us some labor relief. We're using predictive analytics for failure prevention as well as maintenance planning. We do see more runway for productivity in the future, and that's going to continue to help us drive down our operating ratio as we seek to narrow the gap with our peers. Let me turn it over to Alan now for discussion of the business activity and growth outlook.
Thanks, Mark. Jason, it's good to visit with you today. Here we are on slide six. We're taking a look at our weekly car loads this year compared to last. You know, our volumes have largely been steady from March through mid-August. Over the last couple of weeks, we've seen a decline and sequential decline in our car loads, which represents some pressures that we're seeing in the supply chains that's impacting our overall volume. First and foremost, the headline issue, of course, is the semiconductors and the auto industry. As you know, Jason, we serve more North American vehicle production than any other railroad. That certainly has an outsized impact on us. We had anticipated as our customers that this would resolve itself through the third quarter and move it into November.
At this point, our automakers, these customers, are making decisions on plant production on a weekly basis. It is definitely pressuring our volumes. We are also seeing more supply chain constraints in the intermodal franchise as well. There is actually some evidence that the drayage community is becoming even more stressed over the last month. That has had an impact on street turns, on outgates, which ultimately has an impact on our volumes. Of course, you know, well-publicized issues with the West Coast ports also have an impact on our international business as well. Also kind of impacting our intermodal volumes and our overall car load volumes is just overall North American railroad network velocity. Of course, the recent Ida has hit the Gulf Coast and then moved up through our franchise in the previous week. That had an impact as well.
We'll shift over to slide seven. You know, against that backdrop, I'll tell you the demand environment actually is improving. Our customers are becoming more and more confident about demand for next year, although there is, frankly, more uncertainty about the supply chains in which we all operate. I'll tell you, I feel like the inventory replenishment cycle is becoming more prolonged. You take a look at retail inventory sales ratio, it's the lowest ever, it's at historical lows. Wholesale inventory levels are at seven-year lows. Natural gas prices are at $5 a million BTU. API2 in the coal industry is at $175 a metric ton, which is a 13-year high. Really, one of the limiters that we're seeing in the coal network is overall coal production. Going back to automotive, you know, we've had four consecutive months of sequential declines in automotive sales.
Inventory levels of finished vehicles are about a third of where the OEMs would prefer. Ultimately, that demand's there. There hasn't been demand destruction. I think that we'll see strength in many of our markets well into 2022 as we replenish the inventories. We are increasingly confident about next year, recognizing near-term uncertainty with many of the supply chain disruptions that we just referenced, and I'm sure we'll talk about in a moment. With that, Jason, I'm happy to turn it over back to you and answer any questions that you or your guests may have.
Sure. Thank you, Mark . Remind our clients, you can ask questions over the Zoom, and then I can read them off for you. Clearly, the macro environment, as you referenced, has been hit left and right, if you will, between, you know, port disruptions and fires and hurricanes and flooding in the Northeast. It has been a little bit of everything. It is good to hear that the backdrop, the underlying demand, as you see it, is still pretty strong. Assuming we cannot predict what is going to happen on the automotive side, because it seems, as you say, it is changing weekly in a very fluid situation. What is your sort of outlook for the second half of this year and maybe into next year if you exclude automotive for a second?
You know, I think there's, for the remainder of this year, Jason, I think there's pressure. Frankly, I am paying very close attention to the velocity on the street in the intermodal franchise. You know, we have our own self-help to do. We got to speed up our network. The entire North American network needs to speed up. Velocity on the street is really impacting throughput through the terminals. I am concerned about that. What you see is you see pressure on our volumes, although we remain very confident in our revenue guidance of 12% growth year- over- year. The pressure on the volumes effectively just limits our upside above that 12%. Coal demand is incredible right now, whether we're talking about domestic utility, domestic steel, metallurgical for steelmaking, or export thermal or export met, and that's represented in the underlying commodity prices.
However, the mines aren't bringing on a lot of additional production because they're not sure how long this lasts. There certainly will be a correction at some point in the export coal prices. As you know, Jason, a lot of that has been driven by the rift between China and Australia limiting Australian coals into China. Our ability to participate in that upside is going to be dependent on coal production. Certainly, it's being reflected in our pricing. Our pricing environment is better than what we had thought earlier in the year. Our accessorials are encouraging our customers to spend the assets faster. When there are issues out there, our accessorial program is generating more top-line revenue as well.
I'm assuming the accessorial program, not only are the accessorial charges higher, but I'm assuming the terms have become tighter as well.
To some extent, you know, what we did is we started to see the issue with drayage capacity in some of the international markets early in the year. Providing the service to our customers, we added capacity in some of our terminals with satellite lots. We reconfigured the stack capacity in a number of the intermodal terminals so that our customers could go ahead and store equipment on us. Now, we charge for that. We charge for it through the accessorial program. That is what's kind of driving it. Frankly, we'd much rather have the throughput, which means more freight revenue. I think that's a more sustainable revenue stream for us. We're doing a number of things to try and help there.
We've started a dual-mission program where we're offering the steamship lines $200 a box if the drayage provider brings a box in and takes a box out, right? You know, next week, we're reopening Greencastle in Eastern PA to try and offer some more capacity into that very tight market.
Now, you guys are definitely trying to pull out all the stops, if you will, to keep this running smoothly. This is sort of the Greencastle market. You know, when I look at intermodal, it's such an important part of the growth story going forward, especially out east when there's a lot of truck competition in the marketplace. Clearly now, it's a good time for pricing. It's a good time for demand because the supply on truckload is so, so tight. Going forward, how do you see the market and what does Norfolk Southern have to do better and what more do they have to do to win back that freight from the highway?
We feel very confident about the market, and we get that from our channel partners. They're increasingly confident about demand next year. We look at the macro indicators as well, Jason. I referenced the inventory numbers for retail. That portends a lot of demand for intermodal, for inventory replenishment deep into next year. You know, there's a number of things that we can do to improve it. Number one is we've largely solved the wheel end issue, the safety recall with our chassis. On the second quarter earnings call, we said that by the end of August, we would have repaired 75% of those chassis. We actually had repaired closer to 80%. As of today, we've repaired 85%. Effectively, all the chassis that are on our lines have been repaired. That's one part of the solution. Another part of the solution is leasing additional chassis.
We're going to take delivery of 1,100 chassis off the lease market starting in September of this year. Mark's team and my team are collaborating on what our capital requirement will be for chassis next year. We're reworking some of our labor contracts at the intermodal terminals to improve the quality of the service we're providing to our customers. We're working to improve overall train speed and the predictability of our service so that our customers can more tightly schedule appointments with the warehousing. Of course, we're partnering with the Western Roads as well to affect steel wheel interchange in some of the interchange markets, which takes pressure off the drayage network, the chassis network, and the intermodal terminals.
That's great color. It's good to hear you guys are up to 85% with the chassis repairs. I wanted to switch, sort of similar topic, but looking at it from a shipper perspective. You know, when I go out there to the shipping conferences, as you know, I go to a lot of them. It seems like supply chain visibility has become so important to the shipping community. You guys began rolling out sort of a next-generation tray reporting application to improve the visibility and customer service. How is that initiative progressing? Are there any other technology initiatives that you guys might be leaning into?
Yeah, we have been rolling out what we call mobile tray reporting, which will ultimately improve the real-time reporting of our train locations. More specifically for our customers, it's about where that local crew is. We are going to combine that with improvements in our digital-facing technology that will allow our customer to see, our local customer, to find out on the day of scheduled service, kind of the window in which the customer can expect to be served. As that window approaches, that window will shrink as well. You can think about an e-commerce-type delivery customer experience. That is where we are headed. That is what our customers demand from us. That is what they demand in order to shift business from the highway to rail.
The other thing that, in addition to technology improvements and developing a best-in-class customer service product, the other conversation that we're having with customers right now is on sustainability and ESG. Over 25% of our customers have announced some sort of carbon abatement program. Rail is 3x, 4x more efficient than truck. In our franchises, you noted earlier, there is a lot of opportunity for highway-to-rail conversions. That is becoming a decision point for our customers. I really could not have said that to you 18 months ago. Within the last year and a half, it has become increasingly important to our customers. That is right within our wheelhouse.
I'm assuming that 25% is going to be 50% before we know it.
Absolutely. We fully expect that it will. The wonderful thing about this is it's not just an intermodal product that we're talking to customers about. A number of our customers and all of our business units are having this conversation. It can move in a boxcar. It can move in a gondola. It can move in a tank car. With the strength of our network, which is a receiver network serving the ultimate consumer, which is kind of the fastest-growing component of the U.S. economy, we've got some really good solutions to offer. You tie that together with our powerful intermodal franchise. This will be a driver for us.
That sounds exciting, actually. I like the direction the railroad industry is headed. I think it's much needed in terms of the visibility of the supply chain and throwing ESG. I think you guys can pick up some growth. I wanted to touch base on something I think, Mark, it might have been something that you said earlier when you talked about train lengths in one of the earlier charts that you had put up. Where are we in terms of how much we can go? Are there other things you're doing, like sidings or something like that, that could continue to show progress in that vein of train lengths?
Yeah, great question. This is really the recipe or the Holy Grail for us to continue to improve our operating ratio is to build out our trains longer and longer. There are some limiters that we have, especially in the southern part of our network, where we do need to extend some sidings to enable longer trains. We've put some money aside and allocated some money this year within our own capital budget to start working on that. We have a little bit more to go. We've got a few more eyeballs in 2022 and in 2023 because we think this journey is going to last a few years of continuing to grow out the train lengths. It is kind of the key recipe, Jason.
I mean, when you look at what we've done with train lengths over the past two and a half years, we've got more to go. I think right now, you know, I want to say it's 10%-20% of our intermodal trains out are over 10,000 ft.
Right.
For our ability to try to get the average up to 10,000 ft, that's going to have a huge impact on us from a leverage perspective and a productivity perspective. Cindy and our engineering organization, our strategic planning organization, we've identified the spots on our network where we know we'll get the biggest benefit from. Like I said, it's up north where we're double and in some cases triple-tracked. Down south is where we have some of those limitations. That's where we're allocating capital, Jason.
Perfect. Listen, I'm starting to get the hook signal here from the webcasting people. I do have some questions in from the clients that I have to ask. Let me just read off two here, and maybe we can get them in here. Given the challenges to service this quarter from customer turn times and congestion, have you needed to add asset and labor resources back into the system? If yes, are you getting compensated on continued pricing improvements enough to come back and offset these near-term challenges?
Go ahead, Mark.
I'll add to. Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to go to the same area, which is there are pockets, only pockets in our operation where we're feeling some labor pinch. Right now, you know, it's not necessarily a labor issue as much. We have not had a problem hiring when we need to hire. And we are graduating training classes on a fairly regular basis. So we're doing a better job, and we're trying to get ahead of the curve. There are some episodic issues. But Alan, why don't you continue?
Jason, I think one of the ways you can look at it is look at our cars online. And you know, that's largely been flat. So we're not adding rolling stock assets. I talked a little bit previously about some of the actions that we've taken in our intermodal terminals to add more storage capacity. To answer the questioner's question, yeah, we're being compensated through that through our accessorial program. Again, we'd much prefer to handle the linehaul freight as the drayage community recovers and the warehousing community recovers. You can fully expect accessorial revenues to go down and freight revenue to go up.
Okay. Let me try to squeeze this last one here with a minute to go. What do you think of STB Chairman Oberman's recent comments at a conference that rails focused too much on pleasing shareholders and not enough on serving shippers and the general public? Are we entering a period of higher rail regulation under the Biden administration/Oberman-led STB?
You know, I think that we are absolutely focused on growth. We are focused on a lot of the things that are important to Chairman Oberman and to the administration. You know, that's taking trucks off the highway. That's sustainability. That's investment in our network. That's high-paying union jobs. We are aligned in a number of areas. We need to deliver that growth.
We are absolutely focused on our customers because you can't serve the shareholders without serving your customers. We are really trying to focus on improving our service metrics and providing a great product so that we can continue to earn their business and take share off the highway, as Alan touched upon, and justify our price increases that really go to offset some of our cost inflation. It is all tied together. I don't think you can say that we're focused solely on shareholders because that would be a short-term gain that ultimately you would lose on because you'd be angering your customers in the process if it was only about engineering financial returns.
Yep, for sure. Gentlemen, we've reached the allotted time here. Alan and Mark, thank you very much. Please give my best to the rest of the Norfolk Southern family. Hope everyone is safe out there. Mark, I hope that arm gets better there.
Thank you very much, Jason. It was a pleasure today.
Take care.
Take care, Jason.