Reading & Northern Railroad touts most successful year in its history
Local railroad smashed record of 30,000 freight cars moved
Reading & Northern Railroad (R&N) smashed through the benchmark of 30,000 freight cars moved on its way to the most successful year in its history.
By the end of 2017 R&N had handled 31,175 carloads an increase in carloadings and revenue of close to 15 percent over 2016 and almost 50 percent over the last five years! This unprecedented growth came across all of the many commodity lanes handled by R&N.
Its anthracite coal business was up over 40 percent! Once again R&N is “The Road of Anthracite”. This explosive growth was fueled by a late-year announcement of a major sale of Pennsylvania anthracite to the Ukraine, replacing Russian coal. Following a July announcement of the deal at the White House by Trump Administration officials, R&N was told to prepare to move over 300,000 tons of anthracite by yearend. R&N stepped up and managed to provide all the cars needed for the business and served as many as eight different origins as the entire anthracite community pulled together to fill this huge order. We are hopeful that this business will continue in 2018.
The other big development in the anthracite business was the fulfillment of seven years of work to connect Hazleton Shaft and its new state-of-the art coal dryer to our railroad. That project was finally completed this summer and the process of shifting over 100,000 tons of dried coal delivered by truck over to rail began. By year end R&N and its customer Hiller Hazleton had shifted 40,000 tons to rail for delivery to a Midwestern steel mill. To accomplish this R&N purchased another 121 covered hopper cars and a brand new conveyor to assist with the unloading at a transfer station in Indiana. We expect to convert more of this truck traffic to rail in 2018.
Throughout the railroad there were other successes. Past industrial development projects reached fruition adding hundreds of new cars of business. R&N’s transload facilities and warehouse found new customers and added more cars to our business. R&N’s Forest Products stayed strong and handled over 10,000 carloads in 2017.
In order to handle this growth in business R&N had to purchase more freight cars, purchase more locomotives, add more employees, open more facilities and invest more in our track and signal systems. At year end R&N had more employees, more track, more locomotives, more freight cars, more facilities and more customers than at any point in its history.
2017 was the culmination of more than 25 years of investment and risk-taking for R&N’s CEO/Owner Andy Muller, Jr. Muller said, “It is never my intention to rest on our success and to pocket our profits. My goal is to build the best railroad in the nation. And to do that we have to constantly invest in the railroad. My investment decision might not make sense to outsiders but the proof of my strategy is apparent to anyone looking at our record of constant growth and success.”
R&N has a two-pronged formula for ongoing success. It takes care of its employees with great pay, excellent benefits and profit sharing. The result is a 98 percent retention rate. And R&N takes care of its customers.
“Our goal is to provide our customers with service superior to any railroad or trucker,” said Wayne Michel R&N’s President. “We offer guaranteed on-time delivery and meet it 99 percent of the time. We provide special service to customers who are in need of an expedited delivery. We have the best customer service and marketing team in the industry. And we keep our prices competitive.”
The future looks very bright for R&N as it has over twenty active industrial development projects in various stages of development. Growth is built into the R&N DNA.
“I expect our railroad to grow. I expect our superior service will help our customers grow and as they grow we will benefit. I expect our reputation to encourage more businesses to locate along our lines. We will always take care of our customers and our employees. That is the cornerstone of our success,” said Muller.
Reading & Northern Railroad, with its corporate headquarters in Port Clinton, is a privately held railroad company serving over 70 customers in nine eastern Pennsylvania counties (Berks, Bradford, Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northumberland, Schuylkill and Wyoming). It has expanded its operations over the last 20+ years and has grown into one of the premier railroads in Pennsylvania. Reading and Northern operates both freight services and steam and diesel powered excursion passenger services through its Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway, owns almost 1,200 freight cars, and employs over 200 dedicated employees.