As president of two short lines, Meyers taking 'nuanced' approach to tapping growth opportunities
6/17/2024
By Julie Sneider, Senior Editor
As the newly appointed president of the Twin Cities & Western Railroad Co., Victor Meyers is juggling a lot of plates.
Last month, Meyers was promoted to president at TC&W, succeeding Mark Wegner, who had been the railroad’s president and CEO. Wegner will remain CEO of both the TC&W and its sister railroad, the Red River Valley & Western (RRVW), where Meyers has been president since 2018. Prior to that role, Meyers served as vice president of operations at TC&W, which he joined in 2013 after working for BNSF Railway Co. for seven years.
A fourth-generation railroader, Meyers holds a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, and an MBA from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. In 2018, Progressive Railroading identified him as a Rising Star in the railroad industry.
As a result of his promotion, Meyers now oversees both the TC&W, the largest short line in Minnesota, and the RRVW. Based in Glencoe, TC&W employs just under 100 people, operates over 360 miles of track, and serves a variety of industries and productive agricultural counties in Minnesota and South Dakota. In addition, TC&W provides transloading, rail-car storage and repair, and community outreach services; and interchanges with the four Class Is serving Twin Cities rail terminals: BNSF Railway Co., CN, Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Union Pacific Railroad.
“We want to grow the railroad, but what’s nuanced is how we’ll go about getting there because of the differences between the two properties.” — Victor Meyers RRVW and TC&WBased in Wahpeton, North Dakota, RRVW employs about 115 people and operates over 500 miles of track primarily in North Dakota’s southeast quarter and as far north as Maddock. The railroad offers shipping, freight-car repair and storage, and transload services for more than 60 customers, including nine grain shuttle facilities, 33 grain elevators and several processors.
“This is a very well-deserved promotion for Vic,” said the railroads’ Chair Martha Head in a press release. “Not only is he a national leader in rail safety, but he is also well trained in the economics of the railroad industry and brings extraordinary personal values into the workplace, which has enabled us to attract high-quality people to the team.”
As RRVW’s president, Meyers led the team to embed safety practices into the short line’s culture, resulting in a reduction to zero accidents. The effort resulted in the railroad receiving in 2022 the American Short Line & Regional Railroad Association President’s Safety Award, which recognizes railroads that achieve either a 0.0 accident frequency rate, or the best safety rate measured by the lowest accident frequency rate per person-hour of operation below the industry average.
Meyers says the past three years at RRVW have been the safest in its 37-year history — an achievement he attributes to the team and its commitment to running the railroad in the safest manner possible.
“We made safety the foundation on which everything that the railroad is built upon,” Meyers says. “We started with compliance, which of course is the bare minimum. I always say that’s the price of admission: You want to work for a railroad? You have to comply with the rules and regulations.”
From there, Meyers drove home the message that making safe decisions is the priority because it’s the right thing to do. That cultural shift in mindset took about six years to take hold.
“We’ve done a lot to be more proactive — with our operations testing program, our job-briefing program, our facilities audits — we did a lot of work to try to get ahead of [safety practices] instead of being reactive.”
But that’s not the only change that Meyers has led as RRVW’s president. Another proud moment has been the RRVW team’s ability to identify business opportunities to turn truck freight business into rail car-load business, he says.
“We’ve seen a lot of modal conversion opportunities over the years,” says Meyers. “RRVW is lucky in the sense that we have a lot of origin and destination pairs on our railroad. So, as we identified truck conversion opportunities to move that business off trucks and onto the railroad, we’ve been able to grow our car-load business by 56% since 2018.”
As he turns his attention to include the TC&W, he’ll focus on growth at both railroads, dividing his time equally between the two.
“We have an incredibly capable team that makes it possible for me to go back and forth,” he says. “We have synergies that we leverage between the two railroads.”
The objectives, strategies and goals will be the same at TC&W as they are at RRVW: to run a safe railroad and provide good service. But each is in a different place along the journey of growth opportunities.
“We want to grow the railroad, but what’s nuanced is how we’ll go about getting there because of the differences between the two properties,” says Meyers.
There is some similarity in the types of customers that they serve, however. Due to their upper Midwest location, about 90% of their customers are connected to the agriculture industry. RRVW ships grain, sugar, corn syrup, fertilizer, coal, gravel, feed products, lumber, steel and various other products for more than 60 customers. Commodities handled on TC&W include plastics, machinery, wind equipment, corn, soybeans, sugar, ethanol, distillers dried grain, fertilizers, butter, lumber and other forest products, canned and frozen vegetables, tallow, salt and aggregates.
Soybean opportunities galore
Soybean processing has become a promising opportunity for the RRVW, with investment coming in the form of new processing plants. For example, in September 2023 the regional obtained a $12 million grant through the Federal Railroad Administration’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program to develop, design and construct track improvements to help accommodate the expected growth in carloads from a new soybean crushing facility being built near Casselton, North Dakota. North Dakota Soybean Processors, a joint venture of CGB Enterprises Inc. and Minnesota Soybean Processors, is developing the plant, which is anticipated to be operational this year.
The Casselton facility is expected to generate more than 10,000 new rail carloads annually of soybeans, soybean oil and soymeal on the rail line, North Dakota’s congressional delegation said in announcing the CRISI grant award last year.
Investment in soybean processing facilities is changing the landscape in North Dakota, and as a result Meyers sees opportunity for rail.
“A lot of what's driving the investment in soybean processing is renewable fuels,” says Meyers. “We think that there's long-term renewable fuel opportunities, whether that's renewable diesel or providing the feedstock for renewable diesel. And as we look at [challenges with] the attempts to get pipelines built throughout the Midwest into North Dakota, we think railroads provide a reasonable solution, where we could move liquefied carbon dioxide and tank cars to a destination facility.”
While already moving soybeans into processing facilities, Meyers seeks to increase supply chain solutions for increasing rail shipments of corn to ethanol plants.
“As we identified truck conversion opportunities to move that business off trucks and onto the railroad, we’ve been able to grow our car-load business by 56% since 2018.” — Victor Meyers RRVWAdditionally, Meyers looks to increase the transload business at both railroads. On its website, RRVW lists potential transload business opportunities in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where it operates a 16,000-square-foot transload site; in Pingree, North Dakota, where RRVW in partnership with BNSF Logistics developed 12 acres to create the Pingree Industrial Park; in Breckenridge, Minnesota, where it operates a rail yard; and at locations in Davenport and Casselton, North Dakota.
Meanwhile, the TC&W offers transload services through its recently opened transload facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and through its affiliated railroads, the Minnesota Prairie Line and Sisseton Milbank Railroad (SMRR), which have transloading sites in Minnesota and South Dakota. Through those sites, shippers and customers can connect to the entire North American rail network. As TC&W president, Meyers has oversight of the SMRR and MPL affiliates, as well.
“We’re really excited about the opportunities that we’re getting with the [Eden Prairie facility] and the value that we can provide there,” Meyers says.
Confronting challenges
While Meyers is enthusiastic about the potential for growth at both railroads, he cites two major challenges. One is the competition that the agriculture industry in Minnesota, and North and South Dakota faces from South America.
“We like to see a strong export market demand for grain — soybeans, corn and wheat,” Meyers says. “And South America, specifically Brazil, has become very good at growing soybeans and corn. There’s been a lot of investment in their supply chain and infrastructure for how they get grain to their ports. So, we’re having to compete a lot harder with South America for world export demand.”
What that means for RRVW and TC&W is to operate as efficiently as possible along the supply chain, as well as tightening connections with Class I partners and agriculture producers in the region.
One component of efficient and safe rail operations is ensuring infrastructure is in tiptop shape. To that end, both railroads and TC&W’s affiliated SMRR and MPL have been recipients of federal and/or state government grants in recent years to help fund infrastructure projects.
Last year, for example, the South Dakota Department of Transportation obtained a $24 million federal CRISI grant and $6.25 million in state general funds for a project to modernize the entire 37-mile SMRR line between Sisseton and Milbank, South Dakota. Slated for completion in 2026, the project will allow the SMRR to run faster trains, which will further increase growth opportunity on the line, Meyers says.
Also, the RRVW will benefit from a $6.7 million CRISI grant awarded to the North Dakota DOT for a project to replace 14.5 miles of old jointed rail with continuous welded rail (CWR) on the RRVW’s line between Independence and Oakes. And TC&W in 2023 was awarded a $2.1 million CRISI grant to make track improvements to convert 13 miles of jointed rail into CWR, part of a larger, multiyear program to eliminate all jointed rail on the TC&W main line.
Finding the right people
The other major challenge that Meyers and the railroads’ HR teams are facing is recruitment and retention of employees willing to live and work in rural Midwestern communities.
“We spend a lot more time in the high schools now than we have in the past to educate potential team members about the benefits of railroad careers and everything that we have to offer,” Meyers says.
RRVW and TC&W leaders also are making a point of promoting work-life balance, a key advantage that short lines can offer to those interested in railroading careers. Initiatives such as conductor “shadow” programs, work schedules that allow railroaders to get home every night, and regularly assigned days off are among the life-balance benefits that RRVW and TC&W make available.
“As we think through what differentiates the Red River Valley & Western and the Twin Cities & Western and why people want to come work for us, it's because we really prioritize quality of life on the railroad,” Meyers says.
