In his 16th floor office in Montreal, Hunter Harrison is reminiscing about his birthplace of Memphis, where he grew up a kilometre down the road from Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion.
The king of rock 'n roll would often rent the Memphis fairgrounds, using it as a private amusement park for his family and friends after closing time, and one night, a teenage Mr. Harrison managed to score an invitation through a buddy who knew one of the singer's confidants.
“Elvis leaned on a wall with his motorcycle hat on,” recalls the chief executive officer of Canadian National Railway Co. CNR-T “There was a lady then that Elvis was going with named Anita Wood. She was a local TV star on a dance show like American Bandstand .
“She knew me a little bit. Here I am at the fairgrounds with pimples, 16 years old. She comes over to me and my neighbour – another little acne kid. We talked to her for about 10 minutes. She approached us, we didn't go to her. But the man Elvis is over there. One of the bodyguards comes over and tells us, ‘The man doesn't like that.' I'm thinking, ‘Could Elvis be jealous of us?'”
His face beams as he finishes the story in his Tennessee drawl. On that night nearly 50 years ago, it was clear that the teenager didn't stand a chance in the competition of romance against the rock legend. What wasn't at all obvious was that Mr. Harrison the hotheaded son of a travelling preacher, would, in a very different line of work and a very different place, eventually become a minor legend in his own right.
Thanks in part to his reforms, CN is the envy of the railway industry – a formerly bloated Crown corporation that has transformed itself into an efficient operator.
It is now worth $25-billion in stock market capitalization, or more than 10 times its value when Ottawa spun it off in 1995. And as he prepares to retire from CN with a reputation as one of the most successful railroaders on the continent, his career has taken him back to where he began.
Memphis has emerged as CN's main southern U.S. hub, a strategic yard that handles freight that arrives after long journeys, including Asian imports sent along CN lines from the Port of Prince Rupert in British Columbia. Memphis, where CN interchanges traffic with all four major U.S. carriers, is also the company's gateway to its Gulf of Mexico region operations.
In a fitting tribute, CN has named the Memphis distribution hub after its CEO, unveiling the Harrison Yard last month after spending $100-million to nearly double its capacity. What was once an aging flat yard has been converted into an industry model of efficiency after CN added a hill, or “mini-hump,” to better shuffle trains into proper position. “Memphis is particularly a very important spot for CN going forward,” Mr. Harrison says.
The improvements in Tennessee will help CN maintain its industry-leading operating ratio – a key indicator of productivity that measures operating costs as a percentage of revenue.
The next major de-bottlenecking project will be a major challenge in the Chicago region. CN made a deal to acquire Elgin Joliet & Eastern Railway Co. in 2007, hoping to avoid train gridlock in Chicago's core by rerouting traffic through EJ&E's suburban tracks.
CN now has agreements on when and how it can run its trains through 19 of 33 cities in Illinois and Indiana, and another three or four may be signed to minimize the impact of increased freight traffic in the suburbs. Chicago-area communities such as Barrington remain opposed.
“It's this not-in-my-backyard type of mentality that I very frankly misread. I thought that they were going to have a band there and instead they had bayonets.
“ I'm convinced that it's extremely important to CN and the communities of Greater Chicago. It's the right thing for everyone, but there are a few people who are being a little selfish.”
