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Hunter Harrison named president and chief executive officer of Canadian Pacific
Surprise!
Ah, let’s watch what HH will do, just like he did on CN. First, we’ll sell off the valuable real estate, like St. Luc yard in Montreal, Aylyth yard in Calgary and maybe Toronto yard. Then we can sell off the D&H and the DM&E and maybe parts of the SOO. Now since we don’t get much reveue from east of Thunder Bay, ON, and that line is a hard one to operate, we can sell off everything east of there. Now, just like CN, let’s rip up 3/4 of the sidings on the main lines (CN is now putting them back) to save on maintenance. We’ll operate a “scheduled railroad” (that’s one train a day in each direction) and damn the customers if they don’t like it.
Watch it happen!!
Ed Jordan,
Lunenburg NS
Let the fire sale begin!
Correction: Harrison didn’t retire from the CN in 2009…The CN
retired him in 2009 and paid him very well to go. Now maybe they can save all that money.
Leonard, how about Robert Krebs? Wasn’t he SP, ATSF, then BNSF?
I HAD hope in CP. Now it is all gone.
Get your photos and/or travel with 2816 and the Royal Canadian soon! They will be on the chopping block along with hundreds of RR jobs.
Better get your photos and/or rides with 2816 and the Royal Canadian soon! They will be on the chopping block along with hundreds of RR jobs real soon.
Better get your photos and/or rides with 2816 and the Royal Canadian soon! They will be on the chopping block along with hundreds of RR jobs real soon.
Better get your photos and/or rides with 2816 and the Royal Canadian soon! They will be on the chopping block along with hundreds of RR jobs real soon.
Ho hum on the locker room analogies, actually B-F-D…As for accolades by Railway Age, they hand them out in turn to the CEO’s of the few remaining large railroads. Dick Davidson who lead UP into one crisis after another also was the Railroader of the Year at one time in RA (yawn). The award isn’t as lofty as the Noble Peace Prize nowadays given to politically correct empty suits, but it is about as meaningless.
Harrison’s successes are overrated. He will have a supreme challenge with CP’s mostly single track with 10mph sidings and layers of “old boys” with stale ideas in senior and middle levels of operating management. I’m pleased that I retired from CP well before his arrival. Green, arrogant as he seemed to be, didn’t impress me much, but Harrison just plain scares me.
I wish all of my former workmates and managers at CP good
luck. I think they’re in for a rough ride, but I don’t necessarily think the company will be any better off when its over.
So Fred frilaey got his way.Say Fred tell us if your know so much who is going to win the oval office 11/6/12
This is a radical performance guy with the heart of a shylock. He is not there to appease fans, customers, legislators, etc. His focus is the bottom line. All else be damned. He says that he is good for only two years, then re-retirement. With this atmosphere, I can see an emasculation of CP much like Wisconsin Central . That being said, wasn’t bottom line improvement the reason that HH was hired in the first place?
ALAN LIESSE, I didn’t count Robert Krebs, he was certainly a great CEO, but SP-ATSF and ATSF-BNSF were all merger related. The holding companies for SP & Santa Fe DID merge, even though the ICC shot down the RR merger.
As long as he keeps 2816, the Holiday Train, and the Royal Canadian Pacific rolling.
God help CP’s railroaders…
God help CP’s railroaders…
Can we have a moment of silence for 2816 and the Holiday Express, because those will be on the chopping block now that Hunter Harrison is CEO of CP.
What’s next, a merger with UP?
Trains left out a very important quote that CP issued, "“Following a thorough CEO selection process, the Board of Directors has endorsed and appointed Mr. Harrison as CP’s president & CEO,” said Paul Haggis, CP’s chairman of the Board of Directors. “The Board welcomes Mr. Harrison’s experience and leadership to CP. We look forward to benefiting from his strong track record of service reliability, efficient asset utilization, and strategic capital expenditure.”
“Following a thorough CEO selction process,” bull. Harrison was Ackman’s choice before Ackman won the proxy fight. He surrounded himself with yes men to insure Harrison was chosen. There was no thorough selection process.