CSX's New CEO

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Shawn Tully, The Last Railroad Tycoon. Hunter Harrison became a legend by reviving three ailing railroads, and making billions for Bill Ackman and Bill Gates. Now he's promising to do it again -- this time with CSX, America's third largest freight carriers. Could this 72-year-old hold the secret to an industrial renaissance?  Fortune, Sept 1, 2017.
http://fortune.com/2017/08/24/csx-hunter-harrison-trains/

Note:
(a) "The college dropout [Harrison left 'Memphis State' after one year] boasts the best record for wringing money from locomotives and boxcars of any railroad CEO in at least half a century. 'He's the best operator since EH Harriman,' says Larry Gross, a partner at FTR Transportation Intelligence, invoking the icon who built a railroad empire at the dawn of the 20th century."
(i) University of Memphis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Memphis
(1912- ; public; name change: Memphis State College 1941-1057, Memphis State University, 1957-1994, University of Memphis 1994- )
(ii)
(A) EH Harriman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman
(1848 – 1909; presidents of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific)
(B) Harriman meant a servant to a certain Harry.


(b) Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management (2004- ; a hedge fund) probably got its name from Pershing Square, in front of Grand Central Terminal, Manhattan.

(c) "Harrison calls his model 'precision scheduled railroading.' We'll get to the details shortly [see (g) below], but the basic idea involves dismantling the elaborate hub-and-spoke systems widely deployed by US railroads, and installing a 'point-to-point' model * * * Still, the CSX network presents a totally new challenge for Harrison and tests him as never before. Unlike the uncluttered system of long, linear routes through prairies and across tundra at CN and CP, CSX traverses a tangled web of tracks that weave through dense urban areas and crisscrossing commuter lines. For decades, the prevailing view has been that precision railroading just won't work in such a maze.  Harrison scoffs at such doubt. 'They say CSX has a dense "spaghetti" network that makes precision scheduled railroading impossible, just like they said the mountains and snow made it impossible in Canada,' says Harrison. 'Hell, I'll eat the spaghetti!' "
(i) CSX Transportation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_Transportation
(Headquarters Jacksonville, Florida; section 1 History: X "actually has no meaning")
(ii) It seems to me that likely the emphasis is placed on little populated areas the CN and CP trains traverse through.
(iii)
(A) Canadian National Railway (Having taken over bankrupt railways, Canadian government incorporated CN in 1919 but privatized the company in 1995; headquarters Montreal)
(B) Canadian Pacific Railway (incorporated in 1881 by private individuals with banking of Canadian government, built Canada's first transcontinental railway from 1881 to 1885; used to transport passengers and "was instrumental in the settlement and development of Western Canada," but is "primarily a freight railway": Wikipedia; headquarters  Calgary, most populous city but not the capital (which is Edmonton) of Alberta)
(iv) "I'll eat the spaghetti" certainly has to do with the spaghetti network of CSX. But the boast is derived from

I'll eat my hat. The Phrase finder, undated.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/eat-my-hat.html

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(d) "Harrison's father, Ewing Hunter Harrison Jr * * * Like his dad, Ewing Hunter III [full name of CSX's CEO] was an outstanding athlete. * * * At age 18, the summer before his sophomore year at Memphis State, Harrison took a full-time job at $2.12 an hour squirting oil on the undercarriages of railcars for the old St Louis–San Francisco Railway, known as 'the Frisco,' leaving college soon after starting on the railroad. * * * In 1980, the Burlington Northern (now the BNSF, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway) purchased the Frisco. * * * [At Burlington Northern] Harrison rose to become a top operating manager, but clashed with CEO Gerald 'Jerry' Grinstein, later chief of Delta Air Lines. * * * His breakthrough opportunity came in 1989 [while Harrison was in Burlington Northern], when a private equity group orchestrated an LBO for the Illinois Central, a midsize carrier running from Chicago to New Orleans, and installed Harrison to lead a rescue operation [of Illinois Central (IC)]. The new boss deployed scheduled railroading to steer the IC from near bankruptcy to immense profitability, culminating in a 1999 sale to Canadian National for $2.4 billion, 16 times what the private equity group had paid a decade earlier.  Privatized in 1995 after 76 years as a state-owned 'Crown corporation,' CN remained hobbled by bureaucracy and poor worker productivity in the rail yards, all fat targets for Harrison, who rose from COO to CEO in 2003."
(i) St Louis–San Francisco Railway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St ... n_Francisco_Railway
(1876 - 1980 (acquired by Burlington Northern Railroad); Despite its name, it never came close to San Francisco; headquarters Springfield, Missouri (home to Missouri State University) )
(ii) Burlington Northern merged in 1996 with Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) to form BNSF Railway Co, which Berkshire Hathaway completed acquisition in 2010.  
(iii) Gerald Grinstein (1932- ; BA Yale in 1954, JD Harvard in 1957; CEO of Burlington Northern Railroad 1985 - 1995; CEO of Delta 2004 (brought in to rescue Delta) - 2007)

(e) "Paul Tellier, the former CEO of CN, remarked long ago that his colleagues would try to keep Hunter in a cage, 'but he gets out every so often, so we have to put him back in.' Once again, though, Harrison produced a fantastic turnaround. From his arrival [at Canadian National, initially not as COO of course] at the start of 1999 until his [Harrison's] departure at the close of 2010, CN's shares roared from $4.50 to $34, creating $26 billion in market cap."

Paul Tellier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tellier
(1939- ; table: CEO of Canadian National 1992-2002, Succeeded by E Hunter Harrison)

Quote: "In 1992, he left the civil service and was appointed by [prime minister Brian] Mulroney as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Crown corporation Canadian National Railway (CN). Tellier was a driving force behind the successful privatization of the company in 1995 and was widely seen as being the principal instigator behind CN's [1999] purchase of Illinois Central, which saw the company expand its focus from an exclusively east-west orientation into a north-south one. As such it was one of the first companies to reap the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [which came into force on Jan 1, 1994].

* This Wiki page said he earned "law degree from the University of Oxford." But a couple of websites indicated he obtained law degree from University of Ottawa and a "graduate degree" of public administration from Oxford. There is no offcial biography.

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(f) "On his [Harrison's] first day [at Canadian Pacific] on the job in early July 2012, the Calgary headquarters was strangely empty. Executives were off frolicking at the Calgary Stampede, a rowdy festival of rodeos and covered chuck-wagon races, celebrating its 100th anniversary. 'Word got out that I’d arrived,' says Harrison. 'Cell phones are blazing. People are pouring out of the bars, getting mouthwashed, and showing up in turned-up boots, straw cowboy hats, and bandannas.' "
(i) chuckwagon racing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckwagon_racing
(drivers in a chuckwagon [click to view a real chuckwagon only; in chuckwagon racing, it is a stylized chuckwagon]; The most famous chuckwagon race in the world is held annually at the Calgary Stampede ['In 1912, American promoter Guy Weadick organized his first rodeo and festival, known as the Stampede': Wikipedia for 'Calgary Stampede'] )

Compare:
The Calgary Stampede
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Calgary_Stampede
(a 1925 silent film)
(ii) English definitions:
* chuckwagon (n; First Known Use 1887; from 5 chuck): "a wagon carrying supplies and provisions for cooking (as on a ranch)"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chuckwagon
(iii) The "turned-up boots" mean boots the toe potion turns up (off the ground). You may use images.google.com with search term (turned up boot tee) -- without quotation marks. (Please note that "turn up" in jeans or pants means differently: the hem of pants were rolled up by about an inch.

(g) "The blueprint for this [transforming CSX], once again, is precision railroading: dispatching individual shipments of coal, chemicals, or lumber in the shortest possible times from their origin at the supplier’s depot or factory to the customer's warehouse or mill. * * * To accomplish that, Harrison is shifting CSX's complex 'hub-and-spoke' system to 'point-to-point' delivery. The railroad used to lower costs per carload shipped by running long trains. The idea was that because a longer train requires the same two-person crew as a shorter one, it saves labor costs, while burning only slightly more fuel. But to ensure that 'merchandise' trains hauling a mixture of everything from paper to chemicals had as many cars as possible, CSX had to funnel blocks of cars from sundry local stations into 12 hubs, known as 'hump yards' * * * At the hump yards, the cars are unhooked from arriving trains and pushed [from behind, rathern pulled from the front] by locomotives over a man-made hill—that's the hump. Propelled by gravity, the cars roll down the hill, and a computerized switching system directs each car, one at a time, onto individual tracks at the bottom. That’s how trains are 'built,' and cargoes sorted."

spoke–hub distribution paradigm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp ... stribution_paradigm
(is most frequently compared to the point-to-point transit model)

(h) "In late June, former directors at Canadian Pacific feted their hero [Hunter Harrison, who appeared in the sentences following] at a dinner held the historic Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, the creation of another railroad legend, Henry Flagler."
(i) Between the verb "held" and "the historic Breakers hotel," either 'at' or in' is missing.
(ii) Florida East Coast Railway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_East_Coast_Railway
(Dates of operation  1885–present; Flagler purchased the 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge Jacksonville, St Augustine and Halifax River Railway (JStA&HR) in 1885; Flagler began his railroad building in 1892; A former CSX official, James Hertwig, was named as President and Chief Executive Officer of the company effective July 1, 2010 [This may be the connection for the CP's former directors gathering there])
(iii) The Breakers (hotel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Breakers_(hotel)
(The hotel is located at 1 South County Road[, Palm Beach, Florida)
(A) Enter that address in Google Maps (especially satellite map), and you will Breakers hotel facing the Atlantic ocean. In this Wiki page, you got the hint that Royal Poinciana Hotel faced Lake Worth Lagoon.
(B) The latter hotel is no more. See Royal Poinciana Hotel. Historical Marker Database, undated
https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=96706
(was opened in 1894, was in use until the 1929-1930 season. It was demolished in 1936 [in the midst of Great Depression; (marker) Erected: 1961 by Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials. (Marker Number F-19), Marker is at or near this postal address: 44 Cocoanut Row, Palm Beach FL)

This Database is an NGO, not a government agency.