In search of a few good men (and women)

            When I was decades younger, I regarded most people over the age of 60 as dangerously daft. They didn’t get it. As I have gotten older, my attitude has softened (surprise!). To use a newspaper metaphor, it’s about legs. Young reporters have legs, which is to say energy. They gain knowledge and experience from that energy, and as their legs wear out they become wizened editors of a younger generation of reporters. They develop better brains, in other words

            Railroads today are in the midst of a brain drain. A great generational change is occurring, and railroads are unprepared. The legs remain, the youngsters, but fewer and fewer of the wizened people with the brains. Senior people are checking out, taking retirement and with it their knowledge of this complex business. The people replacing them all too often aren’t yet up to the task. You see this at every level. A major terminal of a western railroad operates at less than pre-Great Recession levels, allegedly because its young managers lack moxie. A train dispatcher tells me that delays on his railroad increase because younger colleagues cannot execute complex strategies. And of how many up-and-comers in top operating jobs could this be said by a railroad executive: “He’s a nice fellow, went to leadership school, and knows all the processes. But he’s clueless whether his trains are on time.”

            All of this gets me to John Rebensdorf, a name you’ve probably never heard. He came to Union Pacific out of Harvard Business School 44 years ago, attracted by “The Godfather,” legendary president John Kenefick. His first job was budget research in the accounting department. But in his spare time, when he wasn’t riding freight trains to learn the railroad, Rebensdorf began doing operations planning, something altogether new at UP.  In his book “Union Pacific: The Reconfiguration,” historian Maury Klein says: “He looked at power assignments and found that shortages occurred because power was assigned without reason. A North Platte local, for example, got three high-horsepower units even through only one was needed for the tonnage hauled. The same pattern existed all over the system. Gradually Rebensdorf made himself the point man on cost and profitability analysis.”

            As years went by, his reputation and responsibilities grew. Rebensdorf’s title in later years was vice president of network planning and operations. But to the extent UP had a strategic planner, it was John. Jim McClellan, one of the industry’s great strategic thinkers, says someone once called him “Norfolk Southern’s John Rebensdorf.” Adds McClellan: “That was one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me.” One coworker talks of John’s “breathtakingly comprehensive knowledge” not just of Union Pacific but of its competitors and connections. “He coupled a genius-level IQ with deep passion for railroading and an insatiable quest for more information,” says this person.

            A whole generation of Union Pacific people trained under Rebensdorf, including Jim Young, the company’s chief executive now on medical leave, and Jack Koraleski, formerly the chief marketing officer and now acting CEO. So did Dennis Duffy, who headed operations for Union Pacific for many years. Working for John was never easy. To quote Maury Klein: “Rebensdorf was considered an oddball. An intense, serious perfectionist, he demanded as much of others as he did of himself. He took pride in his work and could be difficult to deal with.” Difficult? John’s temper is legendary. When it is aimed at you, as once happened to me, you feel a foot tall.

            I can’t remember how I came to know Rebensdorf, except that it was a long time ago. But I’ll never forget my first impression of the man, garnered from a telephone interview. Simply put, I was stunned by his candor and breath of knowledge. You never heard BS from this man’s mouth. His refusal to “spin” a serious problem by prevaricating is a John Rebensdorf hallmark. For example, Rebensdorf’s staff warned in 2002 and 2003 that a stunning manpower shortage was about to overwhelm the railroad, caused by a wave of retirements of engineers and conductors and a surge of new business. But president Ike Evans, anxious not to upset the upward thrust of earnings by taking on new employees, expressly rejected the warnings, says historian Klein, and CEO Dick Davidson would not overrule Evans.

            The result was what I called UP’s “mini-meltdown” of 2004, a service crisis that cost the railroad hundreds of millions of dollars and tarnishes its reputation to this day. In its public pronouncements, UP said it was blindsided by the retirements. Not so, Rebensdorf told me at the time, refusing to toe the company line. As he said to Klein: “The decision not to hire additional crews came directly . . . from Ike Evans.” That is vintage John Rebensdorf, telling it like it is and letting the chips fall.

            Within Union Pacific, Rebensdorf maintained a somewhat private, even aloof presence, although he remained always accessible. His desk was always clean. When you needed his knowledge, I am told, out it came, everything he knew, “delivered with appropriate irony,” as one person puts it.

            At the end of May, John hung it up after 51 years in the business. God help Union Pacific. Says a colleague: “I firmly believe he walked out of UP with knowledge of agreements or arrangements with other railroads that no one in the building knows about.” While his former job was filled in name, I am told UP divided John’s responsibilities among three people. If so, I’m surprised that is all it took. — Fred W. Frailey