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7/10/2025
By Jeff Stagl, Managing Editor
Canadian Pacific Kansas City sales executive Coby Bullard recently met with transportation decision-makers at GE Appliances’ headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. A former General Electric subsidiary that was acquired by Chinese firm Haier Smart Home Co. in 2016, GE Appliances manufactures — and ships — a lot of home appliances.
CPKC’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, Bullard laid out a network map. The GE Appliances execs were surprised by the railroad’s sheer breadth, he says.
CPKC is the only Class I that provides single-line service through each country in North America. Railroads historically have provided east-west connections between population and production centers, but CPKC now is filling a need for a north-south rail connection between Canada, the United States and Mexico.
The Louisville meeting shows why face-to-face discussions with customers are so much more rewarding than communicating with shippers in other indirect ways, Bullard says. It’s all about getting a more concise message out.
“We need to get out in front of customers. It takes lots of education to tell our story,” Bullard says.
And it’s a compelling tale, CPKC leaders believe. No other railroad has the reach or services in all three countries that can help customers grow their business, says Bullard.
To better exploit its advantages, the Class I is trying to broaden that reach a bit further. CPKC leaders believe that doing so — along with making the business approach more strategic — can further unlock the franchise’s value.
Moreover, additional growth then can be generated for the railroad, which now is a little more than two years old since Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern merged.
“We want to show how we can connect a continent rather than connect smaller regions,” says Bullard.
That’s where a “Room to Grow” industrial development strategy, “Site Ready” property certification program and various partnership ventures come in. Those efforts are helping to promote and extend CPKC’s connect-the-continent potential.
Room to Grow aims to take advantage of more than 6,000 acres along the railroad’s network in Canada, the United States and Mexico that pose promising industrial development potential. CP previously implemented a Room to Grow strategy in 2017 to optimize excess land across its network, but now with an expanded reach, CPKC is trying to capitalize on land located in high traffic-volume locations.
“It’s all about these thousands of acres to show we can be part of a supply chain connection,” says Bullard.
KCS had a limited reach in Mexico and CPKC is trying to build on that and sell a broader franchise, he says.
One of the Class I’s recent Room to Grow wins is Aluminum Dynamics Inc. (ADI), a new subsidiary of Steel Dynamics Inc. This summer, ADI plans to begin providing various aluminum products to the automotive, common alloy and packaging industries.
But before that could occur, ADI needed an end-to-end supply chain to enter the North American aluminum market. CPKC showed how it could be a valuable rail service provider and partner.
The two companies teamed up to arrange transportation of aluminum ingots from eastern Canada to ADI’s new slab production facilities in Benson, Arizona, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. CPKC also will haul slabs to a new ADI aluminum rolling facility near Columbus, Mississippi, and move rolled aluminum to packaging and automotive industry sites in Detroit, the southeastern United States and Mexico.
The Columbus facility was built on a former KCS Premier Certified Site. ADI expects to spend about $4 billion on the new facilities in Arizona, Mississippi and Mexico.
Another Room to Grow success story involves Shepard Logistics Centre, a 1,300-acre industrial park that’s under development in southeast Calgary, Alberta.
Located at the crossroads of the CANAMEX and TransCanada highways and a CPKC mainline, the park will offer 20 million square feet for warehousing or distribution facilities and 200 transloading spots. Developed by CANA Group of Companies subsidiary Shepard Development Corp., the park is situated about 5 miles from CPKC’s intermodal ramp and more than 9 miles from its rail yard in Calgary.
Alberta’s pro-business tax environment and low corporate income tax rate, and the park’s central location should attract companies aiming to reduce costs and enhance logistics efficiency, CPKC executives say.
The park will target distributors, transload customers, food processing companies, cold storage firms and manufacturers that depend on rail. Many of the companies showing interest in sites are seeking parcels ranging from 100 acres to 300 acres.
Depending on local zoning and conceptual design approvals, park construction could begin in 2027 and the first facility could open in 2028. By year’s end or in early 2026, the developer expects to select a short line or industrial switching railroad that will serve tenants as a third-party service provider.
The park’s location and potential are intriguing to many potential tenants, says Jeff Edwards, CPKC’s assistant VP of market strategy and demand management.
“We can bring in customers close to a port and to their market,” he says.
CPKC aims to develop a similar park in Mexico by working with former Kansas City Southern de Mexico teams, Edwards says.
CPKC recently selected Shepard Logistics Centre as one of nine initial properties in North America to be certified under the railroad’s new Site Ready program, which is part of the Room to Grow strategy.
CPKC created Site Ready earlier this year to target underutilized land that can become prime industrial sites ready for development. Program locations already have completed necessary environmental and infrastructure due diligence, which helps reduce upfront costs.
Sites are developed and certified in collaboration with third-party global engineering and construction firm Burns & McDonnell, which helps review and classify sites.
Sites are rated on a three-tier status as gold, silver or bronze based on speed to market, growth rate and regional opportunity. The three-level classification system promotes economic engagement and helps highlight the sites’ benefits, according to CPKC.
Shepard Logistics Centre attained gold status, a designation that means all necessary due diligence and master planning are completed. The other initial gold-tier sites are the 950-acre Ward II Industrial Park in Vivian, Louisiana, and the following three properties in Mexico: the 1,800-acre Terra Regia Global Park in Pesqueria; 148-acre World Trade Center II Industrial Park in Villa de Reyes; and 140-acre Puerta Queretaro Industrial Park in Queretaro.
CPKC previously only offered online pages about sites available for industrial development. Site Ready takes it to the next level, says Bullard.
“We’re trying to gain credibility in this area,” he says.
Sixteen additional sites currently are under review for Site Ready certification.
“We hope to have a total of 12 sites by the end of the year — that’s the goal,” says Bullard.
To reach its Site Ready and Room to Grow goals, CPKC also needs to forge more partnerships with shippers and other railroads that can lead to industrial development.
Enter Americold and Patriot Rail Corp. CPKC has teamed up with Americold to develop facilities and transportation services that optimize temperature-controlled logistics across North America, and with Patriot Rail to develop a transload facility in north Texas.
In June 2023, CPKC partnered with Americold to connect North American markets with expedited, door-to-door intermodal transportation via a fleet of TempPro™ temperature-protected containers. Americold provides temperature-controlled logistics services for many of the world’s largest food companies.
In February 2024, Americold and CPKC announced plans for their first joint development: a $127 million import-export hub to be built at the Class I’s intermodal facility in Kansas City, Missouri. To open soon, the 335,000-square-foot hub will support both importers and exporters of temperature-sensitive food moving between the U.S. midsection and Mexico.
“We showed Americold we have co-location experience derived from CP, and we sold them on it,” says Bullard. “We can move refrigerated products in all directions.”
Americold and CPKC began their partnership as two best-in-class companies that have a shared vision of building strong supply chains for customers around North America, says Americold President Rob Chambers.
“We looked to build something together that nobody could build individually,” he says.
CPKC’s rail network throughout North America piqued Americold’s interest.
“It’s a huge advantage for them and a huge advantage for Americold,” says Chambers, who became the company’s president in early June after serving as president-Americas since January 2024.
The Kansas City hub is an outgrowth of the flow of food based on analyses conducted by both Americold and CPKC.
“We saw inefficiencies. Lots of food is manufactured in the middle of the country and there is no efficient way now to get it to Mexico,” says Chambers.
Americold and CPKC worked with the U.S. and Mexican governments to pre-clear freight so trains won’t need to stop at the border.
“The K.C. facility will be a faster, cheaper and greener solution,” says Chambers, adding that Americold expects products to begin flowing at the hub in the third quarter.
Over the next five to 10 years, Americold plans to invest $500 million to $1 billion on development projects with CPKC and its other strategic partner, logistics solution provider DP World. That includes C$100 million to develop an import-export hub for temperature-controlled products at Port Saint John in New Brunswick.
Plans for the Canadian hub, which also will be served by CPKC, were announced in January 2025. To open in mid-2026, the facility primarily will connect temperature-controlled food markets in central and eastern Canada with Europe, South America and the Asia-Pacific region.
“DP World and CPKC are big investors in the port, and that made us naturally attracted to the port,” says Chambers. “Again, it’s about inefficiencies. Food has to be trucked to central Canada — it can’t flow directly there.”
Americold and CPKC now are evaluating other locations in Canada, the United States and Mexico for additional facilities over the next several years. A reciprocal facility to the new K.C. hub would make sense, says Chambers.
“We help customers feed the world, so every location could fill a need,” he says, adding that Central Canada, Canada’s West Coast and the U.S. Southeast are prime areas to consider.
As for Patriot Rail, it was advantageous to team up with the short-line holding company and service provider, CPKC leaders say. In March, the two partners announced plans to develop a multi-commodity transload facility on CPKC’s network in Denton, Texas.
The facility will offer reliable and competitive transload services and logistics solutions to customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area, which ranks as one of North America’s fastest-growing regions.
Patriot Rail and CPKC long have talked about exploiting opportunities where populations are growing, says Nathan Johns, Patriot Rail’s regional VP of business development. Denton fits that mold and hits on all macroeconomic factors, he says.
“[And] CPKC has no presence north of DFW,” Johns adds.
Patriot Rail and CPKC are working on designs and determining the facility’s commodity mix, which might include cement, aggregates and lumber. For example, lumber could be transported all the way from Canada to Denton on CPKC’s single line, says Johns.
Construction is anticipated to start sometime in 2025, with the facility handling the first cars in second-quarter 2026. Patriot Rail plans to form a new short line to operate the facility and serve the property. As of press time, the company continued to engage in the regulatory filing process, so Patriot Rail declined to provide the new railroad’s formal name.
Patriot Rail currently is holding talks with CPKC about developing two to three additional transload facilities, says Johns.
“We haven’t determined where, but this [Denton] facility could be replicated elsewhere,” he says. “This serves as a proof of concept.”
Over the next two years, CPKC is anticipating the opening of various facilities totaling about $20 billion worth of industrial development projects. As the Class I amps up efforts to tout its reach, expand its partnerships and tailor more services, that dollar total stands a good chance to go up.
Continuing to meet with potential and existing customers in person will help generate fruitful discussions that could lead to more industrial development, Bullard stresses.
“We are having broader strategic conversations, and that goes across the business,” he says.
Email questions or comments to jeff.stagl@tradepress.com.