By Julie Sneider, Senior Editor
As vice president of fleet management at the rail-car pooling company TTX, Bill Sheehan has spent a lot of time studying whether the nation’s boxcar fleet may soon face a shortage, reaching what some in the industry call the “boxcar cliff.”
The impending “cliff” concern comes around every few years — and it’s a hot topic right now, with some believing a boxcar shortage is just around the corner as older models are retired but new car builds aren’t keeping pace. Sheehan — who oversees the planning, forecasting and distribution of TTX’s rail-car fleet — believes such concerns are misplaced.
There are enough boxcars in storage today to meet existing as well as underlying market demand, he says. Moreover, the rail industry has continued to invest in enough new rail cars as older ones are retired. On top of that, customers’ demand for greater capacity per car has helped drive the trend toward production of 60-foot boxcars, up from the standard 50-foot cars. A 60-foot car enables shippers to move up to 20% more goods per load.
“The fact is that rail industry participants – railroads, rail-car leasing companies and others – have continued to make significant investments in boxcars, renewing the fleet with modern cars that are better adapted to today’s mix of boxcar traffic as part of a market-driven process,” Sheehan says.
Another factor that helps hold off a shortage is rail-car pooling, which helps reduce empty miles, ensures better use of the rail-car fleet and improves service for shippers, Sheehan believes.
“The rail industry is well-positioned to meet future demand for boxcars,” he says.
Sheehan joined TTX in December 2018, bringing with him extensive experience in rail-car leasing and operations. Prior to TTX, he was VP of sales at Wells Fargo Rail, one of North America's largest rail-car leasing firms. Before that, he worked in various operations roles at CN and Illinois Central Railroad (IC), which CN acquired in 1998.
"I make it a point to look for a way to keep that passion for the rail car alive every day." — Bill Sheehan, TTX Co. TTX Co.Railroading runs in the family
Sheehan has spent a good part of his career thinking about efficient railroad operations. He joined the industry while still enrolled at Northern Illinois University, working summers by “swinging a sledgehammer” with the track gangs on the Union Pacific Railroad.
That Sheehan spent the summers of his college years sweating it out as a trackman isn’t surprising; his dad’s longtime career in rail “had a huge influence” on him, he says. While growing up on Chicago’s South Side, Sheehan listened to his dad’s stories about working for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, and then in the traffic department at Morton Salt, which received salt shipments from the Great Salt Lake, Garfield & Western Railway. In the later part of his career, Sheehan’s father served as VP of sales at a rail-car manufacturer and various rail-car leasing companies.
After Sheehan graduated from NIU with a degree in industrial technology (with an emphasis on safety), it was natural for him to join the IC, where he became the first person hired into the railroad’s management trainee program. It was there that Sheehan met the second-most influential person in his career: Hunter Harrison.
Harrison joined the IC in 1989 as VP and chief operating officer, and later was promoted to president and CEO. The IC was one of the three railroads where Harrison built his reputation as a successful rail industry executive known for turning around railroads by implementing precision scheduled railroading (PSR). Today, many still consider Harrison — who died in December 2017 — as the father of PSR.
Harrison came to the IC from Burlington Northern, the predecessor to BNSF Railway, which had a management trainee program for college graduates that Harrison liked. When Harrison arrived at the IC, he started a similar trainee program there.
“He wanted to concentrate the program in the operations department to mold future trainmasters,” says Sheehan.
So, on his first day at the IC, Sheehan was told to report to the office of Ed Harris, then the railroad’s vice president of operations.
“I was a bit of a test case to see how the program might work,” Sheehan recalls. “The final exam was at Johnston Yard in Memphis, Tennessee. Mr. Harrison wanted us to prove ourselves in his hometown, which was Memphis. You were left alone on the night shift for a week, and if you ran a good operation and were still standing on Monday morning, you graduated.”
From trainee to ‘Hunter Harrison disciple’
Sheehan did graduate from trainee to trainmaster, then rose through the ranks of IC’s operations department during the 1990s. In 1998, when CN acquired the IC, Sheehan was among those who moved to Canada with Harrison, who became the Class I’s VP and chief operating officer and later, its president and CEO. Sheehan spent 10 years at IC/CN, soaking up as much about railway operations as he could from Harrison and his team.
But after a decade of running the trains at IC and CN, Sheehan returned to the classroom, earning a master’s degree in organizational management at DePaul University in Chicago. From there, his next stop was Union Rail, then a rail-car leasing company that folded into Wells Fargo Rail. Sheehan spent 10 years on the rail-car leasing side of the business, where he called on short-line clients and, later, the Class Is.
When he moved on to TTX, it was to become assistant VP of the automotive fleet; TTX soon after added intermodal and general equipment to his responsibilities. A little over a year ago, he was promoted to his current role as VP of fleet management.
Although it’s been many years since he worked at CN, Sheehan still identifies himself as a “disciple" of Hunter Harrison.
“There are things that I do every day that he’s certainly had an influence on, there’s no question,” he says.
At CN, Harrison ran classes — dubbed “Hunter Camp” — for railroaders to learn the principles of PSR. He authored the textbook, “How We Work and Why: Running a Precision Railroad,” used in those classes. Sheehan now uses the book to educate new employees of TTX’s fleet department.
“I think that no matter the job, I have always spent time each day focused on the rail car and its movement,” says Sheehan. “For example, when I was a trainmaster at IC, we started what was called a ‘trip plan.’ It was a schedule for each car and how it should move. If it did not move according to the schedule, you heard about it from your boss, your boss's boss, and sometimes from Mr. Harrison himself.”
It was important to Harrison that railroaders kept their promises, and Sheehan loved the challenge presented by his former boss’s high standards.
“Mr. Harrison held you responsible for every single car in your yard or area of responsibility, and there were no excuses for doing less than 100%,” Sheehan says. “Today, I make it a point to look for a way to keep that passion for the rail car alive every day.”