Another shaking of the management tree at CSX. HH has brought in a buddy that was with CN and several others, including a couple of women, are out. Also mentions his "undisclosed" health ailment. The fun continues.
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Where did you get your information?
I read an article on the internet, I think, the Wall Street Journal page. I think the new guy is "Foote" who was with CN. The COO was let go and a woman who was head of Marketing and another woman. I read through it quickly, it was pretty ****ing. I was surprised they made note of his health and using an oxygen cylinder. Plus they wrote about a successor. Looks like their stock was down, too.
Dominic Mazoch posted:Where did you get your information?
Go to the Jacksonville, FL "GLOBE NEWSWIRE", of 10-25-2017
Yes. I found it at the very bottom of the WSJ page but don't know how to post it. They canceled their investor's conference and are buying back over a Billion $$ worth of stock. Price has continued to drop. Something going on. A sale to CN ??
I read the WSJ article. Thanks
I doubt it's a sale to CN Jim. I think it's just more proof Harrison is out of his mind.
I knew Jim Foote pretty well when he was with CN and he is a marketing person (a good one, in my opinion) not an operations guy. I'll add Jim has a fairly mercurial temperament which does seem to dovetail with Hunter's approach to running a railroad.
That aside; I am at a loss why CSX's board would find this to be a logical move given Jim has been out of railroading for 8 years and likely knows next to nothing about CSX's network or operations.
What is even more puzzling to me is several Wall Street analysts have called it a good move; all of which proves to me they are as crazy as Harrison seems to be.
Curt
I reached the conclusion a long time ago that the "Wizards of Wall Street" know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the railroading business. They believe whatever the latest fluff piece press release says. I stopped paying attention to them years ago.
Aa for these moves at CSX, they had better do something! I don't think I have ever seen a railroad in such bad shape with regard to operations and customer service. They are in SERIOUS trouble.
I seen a train with 175 cars rolling on CSX track right through the center of a small town, half of the cars were tankers with flammable plaques up. Are they nuts. 
John Pignatelli JR. posted:I seen a train with 175 cars rolling on CSX track right through the center of a small town, half of the cars were tankers with flammable plaques up. Are they nuts.
I hate to burst your bubble, but that happens on every railroad, every day. Nothing at all unusual about that. Railroads all go through towns...
OGR Webmaster posted:I reached the conclusion a long time ago that the "Wizards of Wall Street" know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the railroading business. They believe whatever the latest fluff piece press release says. I stopped paying attention to them years ago.
Aa for these moves at CSX, they had better do something! I don't think I have ever seen a railroad in such bad shape with regard to operations and customer service. They are in SERIOUS trouble.
Maybe SP right before it was bought by UP.
Dominic Mazoch posted:OGR Webmaster posted:I reached the conclusion a long time ago that the "Wizards of Wall Street" know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the railroading business. They believe whatever the latest fluff piece press release says. I stopped paying attention to them years ago.
Aa for these moves at CSX, they had better do something! I don't think I have ever seen a railroad in such bad shape with regard to operations and customer service. They are in SERIOUS trouble.
Maybe SP right before it was bought by UP.
And I would add most of those wizards know Anything About Any Business.
Well, that's one way to take responsibility for a mess, Hunter . . . blame subordinates.
Hunter is ill, alright, it's PITA ala CSX.
Just one too many, old man.
Ed
I have a dear friend who is contracted to pick up railway disasters. He says the problem is Harrison has thinned CSX of most of their skilled laborers and specialized employees. He also says that other companies would contract CSX workers to help maintain and pick up after accidents. In addition, as was the case for him, their training program was the best there was, and companies like NS would even pay CSX to train their specialized laborers. This has all stopped because of the way HH is stripping this company of departments and laborers the he sees redundant. Any comments, questions, or corrections? Why hasn't CSX fired him?
Yes, I think the 3rd Reich owned the rights to SS. What a mess HH has made of a good RR. Gut the company to enrich the investors.
Number 90 posted:Well, that's one way to take responsibility for a mess, Hunter . . . blame subordinates.
Sums up being a CEO
“Just being part of the senior team at CNI was akin to accumulating operating experience.”
Well; there you go! I've spent most of my career working with chemical engineers. If I follow this logic; I reckon I AM a chemical engineer now. Time to ask for a raise by golly! 
Curt
I didn't want to be an engineer-I knew more about pumps than most engineers. Part of my problems were trying to educate them. Poor CSX !!
Yardlimits.com has info on the CSX
HH: open mouth, insert Foote! 
LOCOMOTION posted:Yardlimits.com has info on the CSX
That is the worst on line forum I've ever seen. I tried to read a few things and got nowhere. It just kept serving the same page, over and over again. That's a shame because the forum topics look interesting.
I have no problems at yardlimits.com. Did ya register?
LOCOMOTION posted:I have no problems at yardlimits.com. Did ya register?
No, I didn't register and have no plans to. I don't want to post, I just want to read a few things. Guess I'll pass...
Is that how EHH works? His way or the highway? Did he run every railroad he CEOed into the ground?
Robert K posted:Is that how EHH works? His way or the highway? Did he run every railroad he CEOed into the ground?
I think he ran his train crews into the ground and weakened the unions to point of no return.
His buddy Creel in Calgary is doing then same thing.
The employees are the ones in 99% of the cases that pay the price in these cases. They can only hope for time to take its toll.
As someone familiar with management theory and Wall Street, this isn't surprising at all. A very old idea in the world of management is that the key to everything is marketing, that if you have a brilliant marketing department that you can sell anything (what is even worse, a corollary to this is marketing people don't have to understand the product they are selling.....) and thus putting a marketing guy in charge of operations falls into this realm.
I don't know Foote from a hole in the wall, but reading the description of him in the newsletter this is the classic style of management that is usually exemplified by GE under Jack Welch, which is a very numbers focused/efficiency based approach to businesses that quite frankly based on my own background and study, often leaves out things like customer service and ideas like employees as anything but a number of a cost sheet, and things like expertise mean very little in this world, that much I can tell you. Wall Street loves it because stock price is very, very heavily focused on cost cutting, but in the long term it has destroyed or nearly destroyed companies (want a classic example? Read the case study on Bob Nardini when he was hired to run Home Depot using the "GE" way (he was one of Jack Welch's disciples), and how he nearly put the company into bankruptcy (and walked away with 150 million when the board had to act). The board allowed this because they likely saw cost slashing and efficiency as the way to boost the stock price quickly,in light of CSX facing declining revenues from coal and other questions, and it may cause the stock price to be boosted depending on how much slashing they do, but in terms of long range future of the company,I leave that to the gods of chance and the future.
There is one thing about this PR stuff. That worked before the Net was commonplace. Now one can find dirt on anything 24/7. The best thing is not to make dirt in the first place, or the gig is up.
The problem is management "theory" hasn't quite caught up to the days of the internet and the sheer amount of information out there, the marketing and PR types believe they can "manage the message" and so forth, think that they can contain "any blowback".....and the problem is they can't. All you need to do is look at Wells Fargo and the continuing mess there, or the Equifax screw up, to see that all the PR in the world won't help them, nor will their legal teams, both are facing severe consequences for their actions, and both could potentially bring a ton of pain down on other players in their sector, all because they thought they could "contain" the mess.
I really think a lot of boardroom and PR thinking is stuck in the Reagan era. Even locomotives made during that time are either surge power, rebuilt or retired. For many "Winter is coming", and did not see the change of non-weather climate they help create.
Also, when HH was in control of the OC, many parts of the IC was already spinned out as short lines and regionals. In CSX case, maybe that should have been done first, then redo the rest.
CSX today is the perfect railroad for 10-31.
TRUE DAT !!!
To me, to pay an exec so much money so he/she can cut costs makes NO SENSE! Do BOD's have any sense of math?
The railroads and energy products are teaching a valuable concept. A company without customers has value to nobody!
With all the negativity here, I was thinking the CSX stock price must be way down. I like to buy stocks when everybody else is running them down. I checked and saw that the stock price is actually still very high. A slight dip lately, but UNP has something very similar. Things aren't bad enough at CSX yet for me to consider buying a block of its stock.
Kent in SD
Try GE
jim pastorius posted:Try GE
Can't stand Jeffrey Immelt.
Kent in SD
"To me, to pay an exec so much money so he/she can cut costs makes NO SENSE! Do BOD's have any sense of math?"
Actually, they do, and it has to do with how executives are paid and how that is reported. When you pay cash salary or bonus, that is considered a direct expense and is put against revenues, so with benefits if it costs let's say 50k and employee in salary and benefits, and I have 100 employees, then I would book 5 million against revenue for that cost (yes, companies get tax credits for those costs, but the full value is booked against revenue).
With executives, most of their pay is not in cash bonuses and pay, a typical CEO cash package is typically around 1 million for a big company or so. That same pay pales against what they get in company stock, most executives get grants that are in many multiples of this, so when you read about a CEO making 40 million a year, almost all of it is stock grants (usually they vest in a year). What makes this different is that companies still don't have to book these against revenue as a cost (it is voluntary still), so from the perspective of costs, that 39 million doesn't exist (40million -1 million in my hypothetical example). However, the company does get to deduct that 39 million as a cost against taxes, so they have a win win, that cost doesn't upset stock analysts, but it gets them a nice deduction.......So basically if you take a ceo making 40 million, the books see a 1 million cost, but the 40 million lessens federal taxes, and if said CEO lays off 1k workers @ 50k a year, that takes 50 million a year off the books as a direct cost........which makes Wall street and executives and well off stockholders happy with the windfall that will bring when analysts applaud dropping costs.
