Credit Sussie Investor conference today excerpt. Q&A session
Let the PSR f—ging will continue its in their DNA
AllisonLandry
Okay, maybe turning to sort of operations and network. Could you walk through where you think you are as far as the structural changes that have been made to the network particularly to further rationalization? Then we could maybe talk about the transition from Vena to – and basically just sort of understand maybe how difference which is coming and – Eric has been grounded and let Jim on – so if you could maybe give us a key message for this transition, and what you would want to communicate to investors.
LanceFritz
Yes. So there are a couple of key points in response to that. First is that PSR is here to stay. It's built or building into our DNA into our culture. I'd say there's still work to be done there. But I have zero fear about backsliding, right? It's deep enough now to where the ideas for improvement are coming from the ground up. They're coming from our frontline and our mid-level management team and the craft professionals doing the work. Because they understand what we're trying to accomplish. Now, there's more work to be done there, right. It's – we're nowhere near perfect in terms of our cultural stance towards continuous improvement through PSR.
But the fact that it's – the way we're going to run the business, and the fact that new ideas for improvement are coming from the field is fantastic. That's exactly what we want to say. In terms of the maturity of our PSR implementation, again, we're somewhere in the middle of the, I wouldn't, I would hesitate to even say we're in the middle of implementation. PSR is evergreen for us. So we're exceptionally proud and exceptionally proud of what we've accomplished in the last two and a quarter years or so, right, we've fundamentally redesigned the network, we've taken a lot of touches out of our network, there's about one third fewer train starts for the same type of volume, there's about one quarter to one third fewer touches of a car for the same volume of manifest business.
And we're doing much more efficient work when it comes to building and maintaining our rail. I was just visiting a [tie gang] in Texas, and year-over-year they've reduced their cost to install a wood and tie by about 25%. And they were rewarded by being able to get more work done, and basically pulling them forward some tie program for next year. I see that all over the rail. So we're building and maintaining a better cost and our overall cost structures down on our service products up. That's an evergreen process. And we have to find more opportunity there as well. There's stuff that's already in slide. You've talked about Chicago and the product there. We've talked about Houston and the separation of our intermodal manifest products there.
We're looking at LA basin, there's probably going to be some work done there. And then there's still work to be done online a road right between LA and Chicago, LA and Dallas in Shreveport, LA and Houston, as well as Chicago in the Pacific Northwest. So all that's underway.
Now, let's turn to the transitioning between Jim and Eric. Comparing the two, they're different personalities for sure; you'll see that Allison, I think you've already started to see that in how they present themselves, so they are just different people. But in the most important things, they are very similar. They're very competitive, they absolutely want to win. They don't take nonsense. That is accountability is a big, big deal. You can't hide from Jim behind platitudes and saying things are all right, just like you can't hide from Eric on the same topic. And they're absolutely driven to continue to take risks and look for ways to do better. And so in the most important ways, from my perspective and running our operation, that's why that's why Eric's been tapped or replaced Jim.