Intermodal Service Scorecard : Spring 2024 September | 15
What We Heard — NS
Positive-Neutral Negative
“ Love the Chicago trains to the Northeast with multiple departures per day .”
“ Leadership changes are bringing positive results . Glad to see Alan [ Shaw ] remain at the helm .”
“ NS has some superior transit times when compared to CSX , so we use them in critical lanes .”
“ The service we are receiving in 2024 is some of the best I have ever seen . It ’ s having a huge impact on being able to maintain our current business during these tough market conditions .”
“ Since February , NS has consistently met or exceeded our service goals . NS has eliminated the service gap in the East with CSX . Both railroads are performing extremely well .”
“ Our account manager is great . Understands our business and goes to bat for us .”
“ NS is still the best value for the dollar of all the Class I railroads . Some equipment tightness in outlier markets can be problematic , but overall customer service is outstanding .”
“ NS has shown improvement in service and aggressiveness to add on additional business .”
“ NS customer service team is one of the best in the industry .”
“ NS made changes at the Austell [ Atlanta ] ramp going to grounded with appointments . Absolute disaster and is hurting productivity . There were no issues there before these changes . These changes will cost customers more with surcharges and congestion fees . When the rail is trying to win more customers back , this was a step in the wrong direction as this will push customers back to truckload or CSX .”
“ NS continues to lag the other rail providers in providing competitive market rates .”
“ Feels like intermodal is an afterthought a lot of the time , don ’ t think there is a clear strategy on how to use or grow it from the people who are responsible for it . They seem to have arbitrarily lowered all their pricing to CSX levels to try and grow volume and completely ignored the fact that most of it was taken by over-the-road carriers , not rail competitors .”
“ NS is the most difficult railroad provider to work with . They continuously have poor chassis that require flips . They do not provide money-back credit for the bad chassis and we are then losing profit paying the drayage . Transit times poor as well .”
“ Issues around Chicago and Atlanta with cargo theft . Finding boxes sitting outside of terminals makes them easy targets . I hope the sales and marketing teams will be engaged again now that their internal leadership fight is over .”
“ NS had EMPs [ rail-owned containers ] in Columbus and brought on a big account for outbound from Columbus . As the stack was worked down , they had bad order [ not roadworthy ] equipment scattered throughout the terminal and caused issues with fulfilling commitment to the customer . NS was attentive to our needs and acted . The ramp was quickly organized , and the good order equipment was placed in one area of the ramp for drivers to easily access .”
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