Coal Business Group

The Coal Business Group is led by a senior vice president who oversees three functional areas within the group: commercial matters pertaining to the marketing, sales and account management of Norfolk Southern’s coal transportation services; the management and planning of Norfolk Southern’s coal transportation services and coal resource development; and marketing services in support of the above activities. A list of contacts and responsibilities can be found in the brochures associated with the links identified below.

Coal Commercial Marketing Coal Transportation Services & Planning To view pdf files, get Adobe Acrobat Reader for free here.

Sales & Marketing

The commercial area is led by one group vice president who leads a staff of assistant vice presidents, directors, and managers assigned to satisfy specific coal customers' unique coal logistics needs, broken down by market segments:

 

 

Steam Coal Marketing

Utility Coal Marketing: Utility-North and Utility-South Teams

The two domestic utility teams are responsible for marketing of transportation services to coal fired electric generating stations. They work with electric utility customers to develop and maintain competitive energy supply chains for their power plants. The teams assist project developers and utilities to site new power plants, coal liquefaction or gasification facilities along NS lines. The utility teams work to continuously develop and expand coal supply options for our customers to ensure that our customers are competitively positioned in the market. The teams also serve as an interface between NS' utility customers and the rest of the NS organization.

Export, Domestic Metallurgical Coal, Coke, Iron Ore, & Industrial Coal Marketing

One assistant vice president leads both the MetEx and Industrial teams. The MetEx team is divided into two functional areas:  domestic steel industry raw materials and export coal.

 

 

Domestic Metallurgical Coal Marketing

This group has responsibility for the marketing of transportation services in North America associated with the steel industry's raw materials, principally metallurgical coal, coke and iron ore. A director has overall responsibility for this segment of Norfolk Southern's business and has a complement of two managers based in Roanoke, VA who have direct accountability to provide and implement logistical solutions for assigned customers.

Export Coal Marketing

The MetEx Team is responsible for developing and maintaining export steam and metallurgical coal movements via NS. The assistant vice president has direct responsibility for this team's marketing efforts outside of North America and works with customers involved in the movement of coal through Norfolk Southern's Lamberts Point Pier 6 transloading facility in Norfolk, VA; CNX Marine Terminal in Baltimore, MD; Alabama State Docks in Mobile, AL; and several rail-to-barge transfer facilities. The MetEx team is committed to a leadership role in serving and promoting U.S. coal exports to the world.

Industrial Coal Marketing

One manager is responsible for the sales and marketing efforts for non-metallurgical industrial coal and petroleum coke customers.   Account responsibility is focused on the customer's core business allowing these specialists to work closely with their NS general merchandise counterparts to design and provide comprehensive transportation services.  On and off-line customers are able to benefit from a host of innovative multimodal logistics packages tailored to meet specific requirements.

Pricing

The Pricing area is led by an assistant vice president who leads a staff of managers assigned to work in conjunction with the various coal marketing teams to develop rate packages that provide a competitive delivered price for coal, coke and iron ore shipments moving on Norfolk Southern.

 

 

Coal Transportation Services & Planning

The Coal Business Group’s second functional area is led by one group vice president and is divided into several functional areas:

Mine Operations

Members of this team are responsible for management of empty car movements to the mines.

Domestic, Export, Lake and River Coal Operations

This team schedules (“permits”), monitors and manages the pipeline of coal transportation movements to utilities, steel plants, industrial customers and NS-served transload facilities at Lamberts Point, Baltimore, Lake Erie and on the river system. This group serves as a liaison between coal producers, NS Operations, coal consumers and coal transfer facilities. These team members are responsible for train scheduling and day-to-day tactical fleet management.

Information Systems

These team members are responsible for the development and implementation of enhancements to Norfolk Southern’s proprietary Coal Transportation Management System (“CTMS”), which is the state-of-the art business platform for the management Norfolk Southern’s coal network.

Train Scheduling and Equipment Planning

These team members are responsible for train scheduling and day-to-day tactical fleet management.

Coal Resource Development

These team members work with coal producers in efforts to locate new and expanded coal production along NS rail lines to ensure adequate coal supply to NS’ coal customers.

Coal Marketing Resources, Services and Strategies (CMRSS)

The CMRSS group is responsible for developing and coordinating strategy and projects designed to enhance NS marketing services for coal customers. Strategies for improving customer ease of doing business include projects to improve freight and demurrage billing accuracy through business simplification. CMRSS manages capital projects and is responsible for strategic coal car fleet planning and replacement activities. Team members work with customers and NS Coal Transportation Services to improve overall coal car fleet efficiency and composition. The CMRSS Group produces demand forecasts, used for resource planning.

The CMRSS Group is responsible for implementing accurate customer commercial information for Coal Business Group customers and manages contract rate escalations and fuel surcharge provisions as well as other commercial provisions. Group managers insure that customer business records are accurate and consistent.

For contact information, go to the Coal Marketing Team.