Good afternoon. Welcome back, and thanks for joining our discussion with Norfolk Southern. We have the CFO, Mark George, and the CMO, Alan Shaw. I'm Brian Ossenbeck. I cover transports and logistics for J.P. Morgan. We're excited to have both Mark and Alan here today. They're going to be able to cover a lot of ground. They're going to start- off with a quick slide introduction, just a quick business update. If you have any questions, just like the rest of the day and yesterday, just put them in the chat box. I'll see them online, and I'll be able to try to work those through into the conversation as we go along. With that, welcome, Mark and Alan. Let me thank you for joining. Let me turn it over to you to get us started.
Thanks, Brian. I'll start with a couple of slides and hand off to Alan. Before we get going here, as a reminder, today's presentation will include certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, as noted in our 10-K. I'll plan to speak to adjusted 2020 results. Recall, in the first quarter, we had a non-cash charge of $385 million related to rationalization of 703 locomotives. In the third quarter, we had a $99 million non-cash impairment charge related to an equity investment write-down. Any reference made to 2020 excludes both of those charges, and you should refer to the non-GAAP reconciliation posted on our website under this event. You can see here on this slide 3, 2020 results were against a very difficult backdrop for the year, with volumes that were down 12%.
With our continued focus on productivity, it allowed us to more than match the rate of volume decline with expense reductions in the range of 14%. That helped drive a 30 basis point improvement in OR for the year. With the exception of the economic shutdown that we had in the second quarter and the accompanying 26% volume decline in that period, we consistently drove strong margin improvement in the 230-240 basis point range. 2020 did mark a significant year for us of structural changes within the company. We idled four hump yards, two of which were in the second quarter. We re-engineered our network train plan as volumes returned in the second half of the year. That helped us produce very strong incremental margins of 78% and 67% in the third and fourth quarters, respectively.
We achieved these incrementals by running longer and heavier trains, which produced record fuel efficiency. We also rationalized assets and resources that were no longer needed. As you see, our workforce was 18% smaller in 2020. Importantly, it was much more productive. Digging a little bit deeper in on the productivity theme on slide 4, you see it provides a view of our workforce productivity by two distinct measures. Whether you look at this through the lens of units per employee or GTMs per employee, you'll see our intense focus on productivity through the first two- years of our three-year plan. These metrics are up 28% and 20%, respectively, from the first quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2020.
As we said on the fourth quarter call, our goal for 2020 is to maintain headcount that is either flat or lower than where we exited 2020, absorbing the anticipated volume growth. While a lot of that productivity is a function of our PSR adoption and the changes we've made to our train plan, keep in mind that a lot of productivity gains are also enabled by technology improvements that we've made. I'd say that our continued investment in technology will drive more productivity into the future, as well as other benefits. We're very proud of the meaningful progress we've made throughout this period. We're very confident that we've got more runway ahead of us. Let me hand it over to Alan now for thoughts on the 2021 markets.
Thanks, Mark. Yeah, the year started off pretty hot for us. We had broad strength across all of our markets, including our coal franchise, in January. We were actually running about 3% above plan in terms of volume in January, and frankly, about 3% above last year. In February, the storms that plagued the whole North American transportation network hit, and impacted our network, our Interline Partners, and our customers' franchises, as well as the drayage community. We saw a pretty steep downturn in volume sequentially in February. We actually exited February with volumes about 7% over prior- year levels. We were pretty confident at that point that we really had not seen a lot of demand destruction, that this was kind of an anomaly caused by disruptions associated with the weather, and that volumes would return sharply.
We have seen that as we have moved through the last three weeks. So far, through March, our volumes are up about 10% year- ove- year, again, with broad strength across all of our markets. I will flip over to the next slide. Our growth outlook, and we were pretty forward-looking and pretty specific, and our guidance for this year was 9% revenue growth for the year. We still feel very comfortable with that. If anything, the underlying macro economy has improved. We see more strength in our intermodal franchise. The merchandise network and the merchandise customers have increased their demand for utilization of our product. We are starting to see strength in commodity prices as well, which will create more opportunities for us.
I've previously highlighted the opportunity in the export thermal sector as being something where we've got pretty clear guidance to strong growth, at least through the first half of the year. Now, recognize the RPU drag that that has on our coal franchise and overall. We are still very, very happy to handle that business. We're still dealing with elevated stockpiles within the domestic utility sector. Although they are down below where they were in January, it's still elevated compared to target. Our utility customers, frankly, are adjusting their targeted levels for inventory and pulling it down. Within merchandise, we see a great opportunity for inventory replenishment. We've had some pushback in the auto sector associated with the semiconductor shortage. I think that all that does is push volume out of the first quarter, into the second quarter, and into the third.
In summary from a market outlook, Mark, I think despite the downturn that we saw in February, which was unanticipated, we still are confident in our 9% year-over-year, full-year revenue growth.
Yeah. You can see here on this outlook slide, we wanted to put this up again because the special circumstances and all the interest in what happened here in February, thanks to the polar vortex, we wanted to just reiterate that we don't think it impacts us for the year. We still feel good, as Alan mentioned, on that 9% year-over-year revenue growth and high single-digit volume growth. Yeah, we do see coal still in secular decline, even if we get some near-term upside, in particular with export thermal right now. Generally speaking, we feel like February's events don't really adversely impact our outlook for the year on the top line.
Even on the cost side, we still feel confident we are going to drive the OR improvement that we originally guided with over 300 basis points of improvement year over year on an adjusted basis versus 2020. We will be getting into that 60% run rate during the year. We are not done there. We will go down below 60. Our capital allocation, we feel really strong about our liquidity. We are going to spend roughly $1.6 billion in CapEx as we go through this year. We are going to pay out a dividend that we just recently increased and announced on the fourth quarter earnings call. I expect a very healthy level of share repurchase activity as we go through the year. All in all, we think it feels good, still notwithstanding the disruption we had in February.
Look, we remain very focused on creating long-term shareholder value and value for our customers through continued network efficiencies that we're building in. I guess with that, Brian, we're ready for Q&A.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much for running us through the overview there. One thing we've heard from all the rails so far is just the impact of fuel. This has gone up quite a bit. Obviously, there's a lag in terms of the surcharge, and then there's an OR impact as well. I don't think Norfolk's any different, but you have in the past had some different surcharges that are more tied to WTI. I think those have kind of all rolled off. Maybe you can start with just giving us a sense as to how we should think about fuel going up and what it means in the short term from a cost and an OR perspective.
We'll tag team this. I mean, what do we say? Roughly 80% or so of our contracts are tied to on-highway diesel now?
85% of our revenue base is tied to on-highway diesel. Basically anything in the money right now, Brian, is associated with on-highway diesel. From a revenue standpoint, as fuel prices go up, it will increase demand for our service product. That will create some tailwinds for us from a volume perspective as well. That's a positive for us.
Yeah. As we deal with the inflation on the cost side of the P&L, the structure of what we've done here, tying the contracts on highway diesel, we really view this as a cost recovery mechanism. It's going to provide headwind on the cost, but it'll be offset with the surcharges. No real drama here.
I think the bigger story for us within fuel is our continuing efforts at fuel efficiency.
Absolutely. We had, to that point, thanks, Alan, we had 5% efficiency gain last year. We have a lot of activities in the hopper to continue that momentum of driving more and more fuel efficiency. Obviously, the benefit of the efficiency is more acute the higher the fuel prices are. The 5% that we gained last year when we only spent $500,000,000 on fuel compared to two years ago when we spent $900,000,000 on fuel is a big difference. Now, as fuel prices rise, we will harvest the benefit of our efficiency gains. Those efficiency gains are really driven by multiple initiatives. One is the DC to AC conversions that we are doing. We have roughly 56% of our fleet today that has now been converted to AC.
We're on a path to get about two-thirds of our fleet AC ready by 2022 during this program that we have. That's one thing. We've got about 95% of our road fleet enabled with energy management systems. You might think, okay, you're already fully penetrated there. The reality is we are integrating EM now with PTC to make it even more beneficial in driving fuel efficiencies. We've got that as runway. I'd say the third big thing that we're doing, obviously, we're making heavier, longer trains, which is good for fuel efficiency. Cindy is really trying to drive focus on what she calls full pin, making sure that we don't waste any capacity of locomotive tractive capacity.
If you've got room to fit another 20-30 cars on a train without adding another locomotive, that's what we need to do to make sure that we don't waste any particular capacity and maximize our fuel efficiency. There's a lot more focus on the transportation side to leverage our capacity and drive fuel efficiency.
Okay. I think we'll get probably a little bit more into the fuel sides and operating stuff a little bit later. It does help to understand the lag impact on the expense side. I guess just to be clear, though, if you have a higher fuel surcharge revenue coming through at a higher OR, I mean, that'll just have an optical impact on OR itself. Clearly, you haven't guided to first quarter, but at least that's just the way the math works, correct?
Yes, correct. That is correct.
Okay. Okay. Just thinking about going back to network and the weather, the resiliency does seem to have improved. We saw the last quarter with everybody had service challenges with peak, it seemed. Weather hasn't made it any easier. Norfolk, I think, has been performing better than we would have expected and better in the past. When you look at the network and some of the pinch points, is that a fair assessment? Things have really started to gain momentum or turn a corner? Are these proof points that you feel better about how the network's coming together?
Yeah. I think where we've seen issues within our network, Brian, has been in our northern region. That is a result of us reopening and gaining fluidity. Frankly, the western roads also. Right now, we're in the process of, lack of a better word, processing a bubble of freight that's moving across the Northern Region. We're iterating. We're iterating our plan. We're adjusting things. We're moving around some resources in order to handle that and improve the fluidity. That's where our focus is right now, is in the north, as you attend it with the weather disruptions.
Okay. Got it. When you think of just volume in general and pricing, and especially in this sort of environment where you've got strong areas in both, and some of it's not necessarily balanced. Alan, you've had RPU growth, less fuel for, I think, last 12 quarters, 16 quarters, actually, for intermodal, longer than that for merchandise. How do you think about the pivot between those or the balance, rather, between continuing to grow and yielding up? Is it maybe time to start to grow a little bit more? How do you have that balance figured out in the 9% and the full-year outlook for this year?
Yeah. Thank you for that, Brian. It is, as you know, it's 16 consecutive quarters of RPU, ex-fuel, and merchandise growth, pardon me, in intermodal and 23 in merchandise. Frankly, what that tells you, and I repeat that, number one, it makes you proud. Number two, it's reflective of a long-term strategy. You just don't get that by pivoting. The long-term strategy for us really is about margin growth and providing a good product for our customer. Margin growth is important because that incorporates elements of volume, elements of price, and elements of productivity. We will continue to focus on margin growth as our primary objective. I think this year is going to be a great year for volume growth. The macro outlook is actually a little bit better than what we based our forecast on late last year.
We take a long-term view of things with our contracts with our customers. We do not chase a spot market. As a result, you saw our RPU strength, the yield that we delivered to our shareholders and to the bottom line as we dealt with a freight recession in 2019 and the pandemic in 2020. As a result, you are not going to see a huge uptick in RPU in 2021, attendant with improvements in spot trucking. We are going to take a long-term approach to this. Over time, we will continue to outperform the truck market and our pricing.
When you look at the capacity, excuse me, on the network, how do you feel about handling that growth? Maybe we can start with just the network in general, the line haul, the terminals. Mark, you mentioned Cindy's pushing a lot of the operational knowledge or the framework that she's bringing to the table into the field. How do you feel that that's been received? Is it all the way out there in the first version? In general, how do you view capacity when you're looking at some pretty healthy growth potential this year?
From a train network, I'm very confident in our capacity. The ability to run a blended network as part of PSR gives you a lot more flexibility to add business into your network without launching new trains. As energy markets move up, that typically utilizes unit trains. That will create the need to add some trains. That is pretty much in pretty defined corridors, as you can imagine. The rest of the stuff, the consumer-oriented, the manufacturing-oriented markets that we serve, generally move into this blended hybrid network of ours in which we're really focused, as Mark noted before, on an increasing train size, which improves locomotive utilization, fuel efficiency, and labor productivity. A proof point of that, Brian, is the fact that our intermodal franchise, we have generally increased train weight by about 20% and train length by about 14%.
We're handling this double-digit increase in growth in intermodal without adding any additional trains.
That, of course, means that you're not creating more congestion into the network because you're not adding trains. You're just adding cars and length. That's part of the whole overall strategy that Cindy's certainly bringing in, as well as eliminating some of the excess assets by turning cars faster. You need fewer cars on the network in the yards. That also enables more fluidity as volumes come in. That's another big focal point. I could speak for both of us. We believe that the strategy is good and will enable us to handle the volume that we do see coming. There's certainly a learning curve that's coming from a lot of the initiatives Cindy's bringing. She is a great teacher. She's flattened her organization, and she's speaking directly to her people in the field, pardon me.
She brought in some talent from the outside as well to help her. We feel as though the seeds are being planted, and we're starting to see sprouts come up to really transform this network to the next level. Anything else to add?
No. We're making good progress.
Yeah. When you look at the headcount side of Mark, you mentioned basically down 4%, which is the guide for the year on high single-digit volume growth. I just want to make sure I understood. It sounded like maybe there's some challenges in the northeast. Are those being addressed through moving people around at this point? Just generally speaking, how do you feel about bringing the right number of people back in the right spot in the network? What you have lined up, what the pipeline looks like if growth does exceed to the upside. If you can address those to the northeast, and then just generally for the rest of the year, how do you feel labor-wise?
Yeah. We wouldn't attribute the challenges that we're seeing up north to lack of headcount as much as some of the train plan changes that we've had, some of the learning curve that's been associated with some of the changes we're making, the weather, of course, other episodic events. We don't feel as though we have an issue from a headcount perspective that's causing those. With regard to the second point, look, I think if there's an increase in commodity levels that increase the unit train counts that are out there and we need to add crews to handle those, bring it on. Because that's good business to have. We're perfectly happy adding crews as we need it, for sure.
For the rest of the volume, to the extent that it's coming in intermodal in particular or other areas where we can just make our trains longer, that's our strategy. Just to basically continue what we proved out to ourselves in the third quarter of the fourth quarter when volumes really surged back and we saw our ability to grow our trains, we did it. As Alan said, we didn't just make the trains longer. He alluded to it. In the case of intermodal, we made them higher. We added more weight than we did length. That's a big deal. That's been our key to being able to put a lid on headcount as we've dealt with the volume growth. That's kind of what we see as a roadmap playing out here in 2021.
Again, there'll be areas where we have unit trains that we'll be adding headcount maybe in specific geographies to handle that. I think that's on the margins.
Yeah. I think a perfect example of that, Brian, is the export thermal coal. As you know, that generally originates on the Monongahela and goes through Baltimore. We had good foresight into that. We've got a very good contract structure which allows us to plan along with our customers. The marketing department gave good notice to our ops team. Our ops team made sure that we had the resources in place. That is one of the reasons you see the strength in our coal numbers right now is because of our ability to adjust very quickly to market conditions and a willingness to add resources where it creates margin improvement for our shareholders. We're not dogmatic about any one component of our strategy. We're going to adjust to what the market offers.
Leading off the coal side, and you've said it's been a challenging market for some time, probably will be for a while other than these episodic export cycles that we see. Does that somehow impede the ability to improve fuel economy when you look at the next couple of years? Clearly, it's been a pretty good growth trajectory in recent times in growing the fuel economy. Does that become harder when you have less coal on the network? You mentioned the PTC integration. That would be another interesting point if you could expand on as well.
I'll answer that in the other direction. We've proven that we can improve our fuel efficiency in a declining coal environment. We've proven we can improve our fuel efficiency in a rapid growth environment in intermodal. That's part of our plan. Our consumer-facing franchise is one of the unique strengths of Norfolk Southern. Our diverse merchandise market is one of the unique strengths of Norfolk Southern. We face the fastest-growing segments of the US economy, and we're embracing that from both a top-line perspective and an opportunity to run a blended train network and accommodate that growth without very much incremental costs or train starts, which leads to these pretty strong incremental margins that we've been delivering.
It was not too long ago that coal was more than 20% of our business. Now it is less than 10%. During that decline, we improved fuel efficiency. Yes, it was a headwind. Coal going down was a headwind to fuel efficiency during that time, but we still delivered net efficiency gains. It will continue to be, as coal goes down, it will continue to be a headwind to fuel economy. We still think we will deliver net gains overall.
Okay. The point on PTC in terms of just it's now in everybody's system, in everybody's network as the end of last year. You've been clearly working on this for quite some time. It does sound like maybe there are some areas to get a little bit of benefit now that it's in place. Is there anything else that you're looking at, testing, excited about when it comes to finally putting this tool, this mandate into action in the field?
I mean, clearly, the way we're integrating PTC with energy management, as I touched upon, is going to provide us some benefit, certainly in the case of the fuel efficiency. I think there's leverage we can do on the communication side with regard to new technology that PTC brings compared to some of the legacy technology. There's also more remote data access that we'll have today in the locomotives that we didn't have in the legacy. We're really just now scratching the surface on all the capabilities. I think certainly the holy grail that this enables is autonomy as well. We're really working on an overall plan on how to fully leverage all the benefits. Alan, do you have any other thoughts?
From a customer-facing standpoint, Brian, as you can imagine, it's just this enormous data platform. As we talk about providing a truck-like product with the transparency and visibility, it provides the opportunity for us to put a lot of data and a lot of information in front of our customers about the location of current shipments and the estimated time of arrival, which is what's important to our customers. We are excited about that aspect of it as well, in addition to the productivity initiatives that Mark articulated.
When PTC was mandated, it was a billions of dollar investment for the industry. I think at the time, the view was there's going to be no return on this. It's just you have to do it for safety purposes. I think, fortunately, as an industry and as a company, we've all recognized that, no, there's something to be harvested and leveraged here to our benefit to create a return. I'm very proud that the organization has been looking at all the areas where we can look at PTC as a point of leverage now.
When you look at the conversion you're mentioning, Alan, or at least the truck-like service leading to conversion, what is it? Are you seeing any momentum in that with a tight market in truck and just with capacity overall? What are customers asking for? You alluded to it just a minute ago, but what are they saying you don't have yet or why they aren't doing it? I guess in the long term, what makes it sticky? Why won't they just go back to truck when the rates go back down?
Yeah. We are seeing opportunities for truck conversions. Our revenue in our intermodal franchise grew 29% from 2016 to 2019. Truck revenue grew by 17% during that period. We have proven that we can convert business from the highway. Our focus is on doing it in our merchandise franchise as well. As you point to, making it cycle-agnostic. I think the way you do that going forward are a number of things. You have to provide a very consistent and reliable underlying service product. It does not have to be as fast as truck. Particularly in the intermodal franchise, it has to approach truck in terms of speed. It has to be consistent and reliable so our customers and the warehouses and the drayage community can plan their activity around it.
You've got to make it as easy to do business with rail as it is with truck. That's a place where rail is not yet. You've got to offer a great level of visibility and transparency. You have to understand that you operate in this whole supply chain ecosystem. 50% of our business originates or terminates on another railroad. We've got to stitch those different legs together for our customers so that you can effectively offer something of a door-to-door-like solution, which is exactly the ease of doing business that truck offers. Our focus right now is offering the simplicity of truck with the efficiency of rail. Because we firmly believe that for any appreciable length of haul, rail is going to have a cost advantage relative to truck. What's becoming increasingly important to our customers, to our shareholders, and to our employees is sustainability.
Rail will also offer a competitive advantage there as well. As you know, we serve a majority of the consumption in the U.S. economy. We believe that with kind of trends that were accelerated by the pandemic for positioning of inventory, a willingness to hold a little bit more inventory in warehouses closer to the consumer, sustainability, and growth in e-commerce, which is particularly intermodal intensive, that we're positioned very well for where macro trends are headed.
Okay. On the ESG front, do you feel like you're having conversations where people are actually making the conversion from truck to rail? Or is it still kind of working?
Yeah. Yeah, we are. It's a new discussion because a lot of times, as we talk to our customers, the person who's making transportation decisions may not be the same person who's making sustainability decisions, right? We've got to make sure we're talking to the right people. We've got a broad swath of customers in basically our merchandise space and in our intermodal space and our BCOs who are very interested in having that conversation.
Got it. Just coming back to the operating—we've got about 10 minutes left here. Coming back to the operating leverage in the model, and Mark has shared some of the productivity stats, which are pretty strong from a labor perspective. You look at the revenue growth, OR guidance, that implies incremental margins year-over-year in the 75%-80% range, which is pretty strong. It sounds like that's still on the table because you haven't changed the guidance. How do you get confidence in that? I think, and you alluded to it earlier, the last time we saw the strong leverage was basically in the third quarter. That was on like a 20% sequential volume gain. Not that that was easy, but at least you had a huge lever going in the right direction. High single digits, still getting similar sort of results.
What gives you confidence in making that big change or big step change this year?
Yeah. Look, certainly we challenged ourself. I mean, this is an aggressive goal. We proved ourself in the third quarter and the fourth quarter that we can deliver big incrementals. We have got the strategy to do that with, like we talked about, lengthening the trains and leveraging our existing resources. We do feel as though the path is there for us to do it. On top of it, think about it this way. We have got an average train length today that is a little bit north of 7,000 ft. Yet today, 20% of our trains roughly operate at 10,000 ft. We know if we can just bring the other 80% up closer to average, we are going to have an ability to really limit the number of new additional crew starts and just make the trains longer.
That was the roadmap that we followed in the third quarter and the fourth quarter. We're challenging ourselves to do it again. Yes, as we talked about, when we do have unit type of volume, we will add those crews and do what it takes on a headcount perspective to get the business because it's really attractive business. The preponderance of this growth that we see coming should allow us to leverage our existing resources. That's really where we're going to go. On top of that, I think you've got to combine it with the work Alan and his group is doing on Yield Up. Those two things combined really help us get into that incremental range of margins.
Are there any restrictions or, I guess, physical restrictions when it comes to sidings or grade crossings when you take that much? I'm assuming you're not banking on all the coin to 10,000. What could be, I guess, the challenge of getting there just from your network perspective?
That's an excellent question. Yeah. Look, our network, we've got tons of capacity up north. We've got a lot of double track, in some cases, triple track up north. We're really unrestricted from a train length perspective. We do have more restrictions as you get south, in many cases, significant restrictions. In fact, I just authorized Cindy to go and do a siding extension somewhere in the southern network for exactly this purpose. We will start to allocate some level of capital to afford our strategy of longer trains in key geographic areas.
That new siding, it fits within the capital plan that you have articulated already, right?
Thank you. Yes.
The other thing that we're doing, Brian, is we're continuing to work with our unit train customers to increase the length of those trains to match the tractive effort of the locomotive configuration that we put into that lane as well.
Okay. It is twofold. It's the mixed unit trains, blended and balanced, getting that together. And then also whatever has to stay in unit or is in unit, working to get those longer as well. Do you have to offer anything to customers to get that done? How are they receptive to doing that? I mean, at some level, it's a win-win, but it might not be an easy conversation to start. How does that work?
It's generally not too difficult because if you can work with your customers to give them a bigger train, that's more product that they can handle. In return, if they agree to load it or unload it within a certain specified time period, we'll leave the locomotives attached. They'll receive a much better service product. We'll improve our locomotive efficiency as well. We're both aligned on the goals there.
Okay. Probably have time for two more questions. One that just came in, and it ties in with the efficiency perspective. If you're making trains longer, should we see the speed slow down a little bit? I guess the question is, how do we know it's working? If there's other things that we should be mindful of that, hey, the train speed might come down, the dwells might go up, but the net result is a positive. I think we saw that a bit last year, just generally speaking across the industry. Is that something that we should be sort of prepared for? Can you get the bigger trains moving at higher speeds?
The longer trains won't generally result in a material degradation in train speed, miles per hour. What does impact overall train speed are work events. If you've got a train originating from one terminal going to another one, say it's going from Chicago to Conway, and you want to make a stop and do a work event in the interim and pick up more additional business or set off additional business, that will impact overall train speed. Just long trains in general will not. Does that make sense?
Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. I think just to wrap up here, maybe one more for you, Alan. We think about growth and growing faster than the economy. Clearly, the trade wars, pandemic have made things challenging for the industrial economy. How are you positioning the development pipeline from the industrial side with some of the land holdings, especially as the network's gotten leaner? You probably don't need as many. Is transloading something that we should be thinking of more broadly speaking when you look to do more truck conversion on the merchandise side, putting more dots on the map for the East Coast ports? How does that fit into your strategy now and in the future?
That's a big part of our strategy, Brian. As you know, we've got a best-in-class industrial development team. Reports up through marketing. We've got a real estate team that Mark has kind of challenged us, and I have as well, to think about assets in terms of what you could generate from sales, but also, is there an opportunity to use that to generate recurring revenue? The best kind of recurring revenue for us would be recurring revenue that results in additional volume. We've got some unique real estate assets that we're basically challenging our team and our industrial development team to see if they can cite new industries on there or transload opportunities. Ultimately, transload extends our reach beyond our tracks, just like the 250-plus short lines that we serve. Ultimately, transload helps you offer a more flexible door-to-door product to your customers.
That is a part of our growth strategy. As I noted before, within merchandise, we're going to be handling less and less commodities and more and more of the consumer-oriented product within merchandise, which probably requires more flexibility, smaller shipment sizes, maybe even a door-to-door solution, which would fit neatly into that product.
The door-to-door is something you would partner with, not necessarily look to build up on your own?
Yeah. That's not a core competency of ours. We've got a Triple Crown Network that does some of that within the auto parts network. And they do it very well. There are other folks out there who can provide drayage who are more efficient at it than we are. Because frankly, they've got greater scope, greater scale, and they can deliver kind of triangulation. Because you can't make money in drayage by just going one direction as a load and back as an empty.
Right. Right. Okay. Unfortunately, we're going to have to end there. We are out of time. Thank you, Mark and Alan, for joining us today. Appreciate the update. Thank you, everybody, for listening into the call today. That concludes the call. Have a great rest of the conference. Thank you.
Thanks, Brian. Wonderful to spend time with you.
Thank you. Bye.