Coal Is Derailing Union Pacific's Volumes, but Productivity Gains Remain Impressive

Since 2018, all the railroads have confronted the push to implement precision scheduled railroading, if they hadn’t already. Shareholders demanded it, motivated by PSR’s success at Canadian National and Canadian Pacific. Union Pacific is no exception, launching its PSR efforts in late 2018. Its operating ratio (expenses/revenue) was in a better position than other railroads when its rollout started, but PSR has proved to be the surest path to greater network efficiency and higher incremental margins.