R. J. Corman Railroad Leases Memphis Area Industrial Switching From BNSF

An engine from the Nicholasville, Ky., -based short line R.J. Corman sits idle outside the engine house in downtown Guthrie.
An engine from the Nicholasville, Ky., -based short line R.J. Corman sits idle outside the engine house in downtown Guthrie. (Photo by Todd DeFeo)

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. — The R. J. Corman Railroad Co./Tennessee Terminal will add 36.6 miles of industrial track in the Memphis, Tenn., and Olive Branch, Miss., area, the company announced Jan. 16.

The company will lease the industrial switching trackage from BNSF Railway. Operations began Jan. 15.

“We have an excellent relationship with the BNSF Railway that is built upon mutual respect,” said Pete Petree, president of R. J. Corman Railroad Co. “We very much appreciate the opportunity to do business with one of America’s great railroads, and to continue the excellent customer service that BNSF has been providing its customers.”

The R. J. Corman Railroad Company’s marketing team has already started introducing the services it can provide to those in the service area, along with the team members who will support the services, the railroad said. A team has already successfully met most of the customers along the new line, face to face.

“Our goal is to provide quality transportation solutions to customers in the Memphis area. The only way to do that is to meet with the customers and define what quality service means to them,” Petree said. “Our core goals of improved customer satisfaction, improved profitability, and doing both for the long-term, lays the foundation for our focus — providing the best transportation package we can.”

R. J. Corman Railroad Company is a subsidiary of the R. J. Corman Railroad Group, LLC, which is the owner of several business entities providing a full array of services to the rail industry. Based in Nicholasville, Kentucky, R. J. Corman Railroad Company operates 12 short line railroads with over 600 miles of track in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

“BNSF consistently reviews its network to ensure the most efficient use of assets and to provide the most effective service for its customers,” said BNSF’s Pete Rickershauser, vice president, Network Development.

“We see the transfer of portions of our Memphis-area industrial switching as an outcome of that ongoing review,” Rickershauser added. “This is our first operations outsourcing to R. J. Corman, a company having an excellent reputation for responsive value-added carload rail service for both rail customers and its connecting Class 1 partners. We are looking forward to experiencing Corman’s capabilities in conjunction with BNSF’s extensive rail network firsthand.”

— PRNewswire-First Call

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