For CSX, 2025 is shaping up to be a 'transformative year,' Hinrichs tells NARS attendees

By Pat Foran, Editor-in-Chief 

As ever, CSX President and CEO Joe Hinrichs was his candid, comfortable-in-his-own-skin self as he discussed the near-term road ahead for the Class I at the North American Rail Shippers Association’s (NARS) annual meeting held in Chicago earlier this month. 

In a session titled “A Conversation With …” the morning of May 8, Hinrichs responded to (and riffed on) a range of questions posed by CSX Assistant Vice President of Merchandise Sales and Marketing Torri Stuckey.  

Hinrichs reiterated some of what he’d shared about the challenges the railroad’s been facing during the Class I’s first-quarter earnings call on April 16 (“Our performance fell short of our expectations,” he said on the call), not the least of which has been the extensive infrastructure repair work the railroad continues to complete. Two hurricanes hit the railroad hard last fall; two winter storms struck in January; and heavy rain, flash flooding and damaging winds occurred in parts of the South in February. 
 
“It’s going to be a bit of a transition year for CSX, but a very important, and even transformative, year,” he said at the NARS meeting. “We weren’t expecting the hurricanes to do the damage they did, but they did. 2025 is about getting that all taken care of, and getting back to industry-leading levels of service to our customers and operational performance, and then building from there.” 

It helps that CSXers have been sowing transformative seeds for some time now, primarily in the form of ONE CSX, Hinrichs said. ONE CSX is the railroad’s commitment since 2021 to foster collaboration, inclusion and mutual respect across its workforce to better consider the needs of all CSX stakeholders. 

“What’s really important about ONE CSX is when things are happening that you didn’t expect, and your performance isn’t what you want it to be, that’s the time when the value of how people work together really starts to pay out,” Hinrichs said. “You learn a lot about an organization how it responds to crisis or responds to something that wasn’t planned.” 

Intermodal is the ‘biggest opportunity’ 

What CSX is planning for is growth, and intermodal represents “the biggest opportunity,” Hinrichs said.  

“We have to remind people it’s more of a long-term value creation,” he said. “It’s EPS growth and multiple expansion, which largely comes from revenue growth. … EPS growth, in many ways, should be a higher priority than OR.” 

For railroads to even have a shot at that value creation paying off, they’ve got to be more customer-centric, Hinrichs stressed. 

“You get the opportunity to talk about growing business with customers if they believe in you,” he said. “Otherwise, why would they trust you?” 

Railroads shouldn’t try to work on building that trust in a vacuum, Hinrichs added. 

“There are lots of opportunities as an industry to get better together,” he said, citing the work railroads have done collectively in recent years to improve safety and develop technology. 

Regarding the latter, Hinrichs said he’s optimistic the new Federal Railroad Administration can be an effective partner.  

During the post-conversation Q&A, he fielded additional questions, including one about the value CSX puts on its short-line relationships. In short, CSX puts a lot of value on them, Hinrichs said. 

“A Class I is the center of an ecosystem, but it’s a big ecosystem,” he said. “We can’t do what they can do with the touch points — short lines are great at that. The value proposition we offer, together, is really important.” 

He also addressed a query about CSX’s succession plan. As in: “Who’ll replace you [when the time comes]?”  
 
Hinrichs’ reply? 

“A lot of the way railroads are run is personality-driven, and that’s done a lot of damage to employee relations. That’s got to change,” he said.