Lately, our big push has been to capitalize on the national trucking issues and find new and renewed opportunities to make the modal shift to rail.
We’ve spent a great deal of time over the last 12 months strategizing ways in which we could offer new service through various forms of transloading with multiple partnerships in order to have a package outlined to present to shippers. This has meant spending large amounts of time building relationships with the various market managers at our Class I partner and understanding how our goals fit into their operating strategies. This initial leg work has helped us focus our time on specific opportunities that our Class I partner has a real interest in pursuing jointly with us.
To us, building these relationships ahead of time and having the initial buy-in from the Class I partner is a critical component of any conversation we have with potential shippers. It’s much easier to sell an opportunity when everyone is already playing on the same team and our objectives are already aligned.
What we have discovered over the past year of avoiding in-person contact is that our ability to build teams and forge relationships from afar is just as critical, if not more so, as our ability to move railcars efficiently.