The
Dispatch A Watco Newsletter
December 2020
Table of Contents Winter Freeze 2020-2021 ____________________________________________________________________________ 4-5 Watco Delivers Amazon Boxes _________________________________________________________________________ 6 Team Member Spotlight ______________________________________________________________________________ 7 Santa’s Workshop Yields Big Gifts for Watco ___________________________________________________________ 8 Team Member Anniversaries _______________________________________________________________________ 9-10 New Arrivals _______________________________________________________________________________________ 10-11
Highlights
On the Cover
Check out holiday gift ideas at watcogear.com Supplies and deliveries may be slower due to COVID.
On the cover: An early December snow covers everything as two Kanawha River Railroad locomotives emerge from the woods near Carpenter, Ohio. Photo by Peter Hayes
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Safety Anniversaries November 1: Oshkosh Terminal (WI) – 5 years November 4: Port Neches Switching (TX) – 9 years November 6: Jeffersonville Terminal (IN) – 5 years November 9: Great Northwest Railroad (WA) – 13 years November 10: Fryburg Terminal (ND) – 1 year November 15: Pecos Valley Southern Railway (TX) – 8 years November 16: Phoenix Terminal (AZ) – 3 years November 21: Burley Terminal (ID) – 4 years November 23: Cicero Central Railroad (IL) – 3 years November 25: Tioga Terminal (ND) – 1 year November 27: Boise Valley Railroad (ID) – 2 years
Safely Improve Every Day
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Team members can earn a $200 bonus for great safety ideas! Watco’s new Winter FREEZE program offers cold, hard cash – and it’s underway now Team members who would like to increase their paychecks by $200 will want to consider participating in Watco’s new Winter FREEZE safety program, effective December 1. FREEZE stands for Following Rules Every Day Ensures Zero Errors. Watco designed the program to create safer work environments. In previous years under the FREEZE program, a team member would be rewarded for simply following the rules. But this year, the program has a twist. “We want to hear from you,” said Travis Herod, Watco Senior Vice President of environmental health and safety. “Safety is everyone’s responsibility. And no one knows what’s going on in the field better than our team members do.”
How it works Between now and March 31, when team members spot a near-miss incident or have a safety idea, whether it is winter-related or not – they can tell their local managers about it. The managers then will enter the suggestions into Watco’s Velocity VHS system. Each month, Watco’s safety leadership team will compile all the entries and select the ones 4 The Dispatch | December 2020
with the most potential to prevent an accident or solve a safety issue. “Each winner will receive a $200 bonus, after taxes, in their paycheck,” Herod said. There are lots of opportunities to win. Herod said the team will select up to four winners from each Watco Service Area for up to 16 winners each month, or more, if there are truly exceptional near miss or safety suggestions with great corrective actions.
Real-world examples To give team members an idea of what to look for, Herod offered two success stories from last year. The first is a great example of what he calls a “leading safety indicator” or near-miss that, if identified, reported and corrected, could prevent a future accident. Herod and his team will begin tracking leading safety indicators as another way to measure safety.
A low-hanging electrical wire A team member at Watco’s Omaha mechanical shop was conducting a four-second walkaround of a railcar when he spotted an electrical wire hanging
above the vehicle. Knowing his job was to work on top of the railcar and seeing that the live wire was not high enough to provide adequate clearance, the spotter and his crew stopped operations and changed their SOPs (standard operating procedure) to prohibit work on top of railcars on that track. His fast thinking kept everyone safe and might have helped prevent possible electrocution.
Lack of awareness Watco’s Grand Elk Railroad in Michigan had reopened a rail line that hadn’t operated for years. But the public, having grown accustomed to the track being inactive, continued to ignore the flashing railroad crossings signals.
E’s (Engineering, Education, & Enforcement) of Railroad trespassing and grade crossing safety and works closely with communities to raise rail safety awareness among the public. “The team’s safety measures not only protected the lives of our people but the community we operate in,” Herod said.
Where to get more info More information about Watco’s Winter FREEZE safety program will be posted on Watco Vision, social media, and in weekly emails. Those with questions about the program can ask their local leadership, division safety manager, or anyone on the safety team.
To increase public safety, team members decided not to shove cars on the track but instead put the locomotive in the lead, using its lights, bells, and whistles to supplement the crossing signal. The team also alerted local police to the now-active track, printed a notice in the newspaper and contacted Operation Lifesaver® to help spread the word. Watco partners with Operation Lifesaver nationwide, on the three December 2020 | The Dispatch 5
Watco Delivers Amazon Boxes preloading the trucks on Thursday and Friday to accommodate for the weekend outbound shipments. A local trucking company, Handy Trucking, takes the trailers and stages them for drivers to pick up on the weekends. Although the boxes are non-perishable, the customer requires that they are sent out in first in, first out order which is tracked by a computer system. When the team unloads the boxes, they sort them in the correct order and place them in staging lanes to be loaded onto the trucks. The size of the pallets the boxes are loaded on require the warehouse doors to be 10-feet tall, but modifications had been made at the facility to enlarge the door size from 8 feet when the warehouse was used to store rolled stock for the manufacturer as they were undergoing an expansion to accommodate for the Amazon business. There might be a chance that the Amazon box showing up on your doorstep has been touched by a variety of Watco team members. Our team members in the Pacific Northwest oversee the transportation of the boxes, from delivering the paperboard to make the boxes to shipping the completed boxes to the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Nampa, Idaho. The Eastern Idaho Railroad delivers the rolls of paperboard to the plant that produces the boxes in Burley, Idaho. Once the boxes are completed, they are trucked to the Watco terminal in Burley which is only a couple of miles away from the facility. Burley Terminal Manager Brian Addis said, “They bring in trucks with pallets of boxes five days a week and then we send out trucks seven days a week. We maintain a month’s worth of inventory and during the busy holiday season, the amount going through the warehouse doubles the volume we would normally handle each month.” The five-man team works in two different 10-hour shifts, one working Monday through Thursday and the other Tuesday through Friday. They begin 6 The Dispatch | December 2020
Addis stated, “We developed a relationship with the customer when we handled the roll stock and that helped with the transition to handling the boxes we are doing now.” In addition to the boxes, the warehouse also stores powered milk, grain, and barley in bags and totes. A company out of Israel uses the facility to store the bag liners for the 50-pound bags of the dry milk. The team is also moving potatoes out of the facility by rail.
Team Member Spotlight
Matt Hayes
Matt Hayes has worked for big companies where employees are assigned numbers. But Watco is different. A trainmaster with Watco’s Kaw River Railroad (KAW), Hayes appreciates the humanity the company shows its employees. “Here, you have a name,” he said. Hayes first discovered the Watco difference during an interview with then-KAW General Manager Mark McClellan. Hayes was applying for a conductor position. If he got the job, it would be his first railroad gig. Driving into the busy Mill Street railyard in Kansas City, Kansas, he was immediately intimidated. “It was overwhelming seeing all the switches and all the tracks and big, heavy railcars. I worked as a baggage handler in the airline industry, where you see planes all day long, but it was nothing like this,” he said. Then there was the interview, it was long and the two talked about the job, themselves, their families, and how McClellan got his start in the rail industry. “He was an open book,” Hayes said. “I knew then I was applying for the right job.” Hayes will celebrate eight years with Watco this January. Today, he is married and the father of two daughters. And while the benefits have become more important, they aren’t what keeps Hayes coming to work each day. His team members are. “When you work 40, 50, sometimes 60 hours a week, your team members become your work family. Those relationships make me come back,” he said. And, like family, his team members have supported him through good times and bad. “When tragedy hits, you see the company step up in a big way,” Hayes said.
After Hayes’ second daughter was born, the baby spent 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. “My manager, Justin Ray (now general manager), came to the hospital to see if my wife and I needed anything. He handed me a gift card to a local restaurant from my team members, so we didn’t have to worry about cooking,” Hayes said. After landing the job as a conductor, Hayes moved up to engineer, and then senior engineer. Feeling stuck in his career, he transferred to an office job on Watco’s supply chain side. There, he managed rail and truck logistics. Unfortunately, COVID-19 hit and to cut costs, many companies took on the burden of managing their own rail logistics. This left Matt looking for another postion. Two opportunites presented themselves, working on Watco customer accounts at the Overland Park, Kansas, office or going back to a position that had opened up on the KAW railroad. “I took about a week after interviewing to really weigh out all my options, and it was my wife that was fully supportive in me going back and taking the trainmaster job,” said Hayes. He added jokingly that he thought after six months of him working from home, she needed him out of the house. “Everyone I worked with on the Supply Chain side were awesome! Whether it was my direct co-workers, IT, Accounting, Sales, didn’t matter - everyone was nice, professional, and eager to answer any questions you had. Coming back to the KAW as a trainmaster just felt like the right choice for my career path.” Hayes said he’s had chances to take jobs with Class I railroads, but he’s stayed at Watco. “There aren’t a lot of companies out there where you can go from running a locomotive to hopping in an office,” Hayes said. “The growth opportunities in this company are unbelievable.” December 2020 | The Dispatch 7
Santa’s Workshop Yields Big Gifts for Watco Watco’s Director of Locomotive Support Tex Inman came from Texas to Pittsburg, Kansas, on December 1 in the guise of a jolly man named Santa Claus. The gifts that Inman brought were too big to fit in the bag Santa normally carries, so he had to use a U-Haul to deliver them to the Watco office. The gifts? Two 7-foot-tall toy soldiers made from leftover materials that Inman found at Watco mechanical shops he’d visited the past few months. One of the creations is a drummer boy and the other is a flag bearer. Both are currently on display in the lobby at the Pittsburg office. “I saw a couple of the toy soldiers someone had made in our area, and they were asking $1,500 for them. They were just made up from odds and ends of junk, and they were about 4-foot tall. I figured that I could make my own for less than that,” said Inman. And make them he did. But Inman decided that he needed to do something bigger to really stand out on his front porch, so he went higher with the ones he made. Inman figured since he needed to come north to visit some of the company’s Kansas repair shops, he should bring a couple of his soldiers for the Watco office, since they were made of Watco parts. The busy Inman spread the work out over a couple of months and built the soldiers during his spare time when he wasn’t helping with projects at church or completing honey-dos for his wife. “If I had worked on them straight through, it might have been a two-day project,” Inman said. In addition to the metal parts from the shops, the toy soldiers also have parts made out of PVC pipe. When Inman was working on the trolly that runs in Webb City, Missouri’s, King Jack Park, he saw they had some PVC pipe there that would be perfect for his soldiers. Inman said, “I asked Jim Dawson (trolley driver and Southwest Missouri Electric Railway Association board member) where he got the PVC and told him what I was wanting to do with it. He called up the company that sold it and had them cut the pieces that I needed and brought it back to me.”
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The only items that Inman had to purchase for the toy soldiers were special paints to use on the PVC so that it would withstand the outdoor weather conditions, and some decals that he used on them. After Inman surprised Watco Executive Chairman Rick Webb with the soldiers, he hopped in his sleigh (aka pickup truck) and headed back home to Texas to play Santa to other lucky individuals.
Team Member Anniversaries Congratulations to the following team members celebrating December anniversaries:
1 Year: Chelsey Adkins, Timothy Allen, Lane Belgarde, Jeffery Bell, Blake Blair, Wesley Bowers, Richard Boyle, Clayton Bringer, Colby Brister, Kenissa Brown, Cameron Bruce, Kraig Butcher, Matthew Davis, Ruben De Leon, Kristin DeBlas, Robin Fish, Jerry Fisher, Charles Fleming, Jessica Geither, Broc Ginavan, Tanner Hamilton, Robert Harvey, Michael Hawkins, Jerome Hunter, Benjamin Jackson, Christopher Kincaid, Stephen Krupp, Brandon Lafountain, Sha Lawrie, Jacob Linnebur, Rojelio Mancias, Chris Mangar, Hassan Marshall, Eddie Mclevain, Kyle
Alison Denzel, Zachary Eriksen, Connor Friedrichsen, Christopher Goodwin, William Grantham, Michael Hallman, Logan Hamilton, Branson Herring, Brandon Hicks, Cody Holladay, Rodney Huffman, Ryan Johnsrud, Shaquille Lane, Tramare Lanfair, Joseph Lehnert, Robert Lopata, Michael Market, Marcus Mask, Dustin Mauppins, Casey McClung, John Meyers, Dominic Nicosia, Herman Pea, Ramon Perez, Efrain Ramirez, Brandon Smith, Robert Snyder, Jamie Winda, Lane Woods, Tayler Wright
3 Years: Steven Bochman, Justin Brewster, Ryan Byrns,
Morgan, Mark Morgan, Mikayla
James Clinton, Kenneth Collins,
Morton, Don Nettles, Jared
Michael Conner, Christopher
Northrup, Miguel Orellana,
Dunsworth, Casey Ediger,
John Salas, Miguel Sepulveda
Jordan Garza, Clayton Hayes,
Trevino, Gary Shepperson,
Zachary Holcomb, David Holt,
Branden Shirley, Ryan Slaton,
Marcus Johnson, Nicholas
Landon Sorensen, Lauren Speer,
Klatt, Perry Lambert, Alexander
Morgan Spivey, Jesse Thomas,
Madron, William Mann, Ricardo
Timothy Thompson, Dalton
Matamoros, Derrick Melton,
Trask, Christopher Valdez, Daniel
Michael Moore, Chase Norton,
Villamaria, William Vinciguerra,
Amanda Olson, Julian Parnell,
Jerayl Williams, Patrick Woods,
David Paspalofski, Jeffrey Power,
Steven Zink, Gus Zschech
David Robinson, Daniel Rowden,
2 Years: Garrett Belgarde,
Andre Simon, Christian Snider,
Stephanie Bell, Steven Bernard, Daulton Brown, Dakota Bryant, Anthony Caruthers, Kyle Cornelius, Maurice Crusoe,
Alison Suarato, Wendy Trevizo, Justin Vandiver, James Warma, Jennifer Welch, Micah Wilson, Jesse Winegarner
4 Years: Jason Garza, Joel
Gibson, Michael Goss, James Langan, Kyle Loofboro, Luis Salmon, Lorri Smith, Kevin Thornton, John Turner, Michele Valdivia, Madison Williams
5 Years: 5 Years: Jon Beach,
Mark Coronado, James Fountain, John Peterson, Robert Rogers, Tyler Roshong, Oliver Torrence, Nicholas Valverde
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Years: Lindsey Alexander, Rebecca Armentrout, Jessie Bryant, Jared Duyck, Scott Hallman, Nathan Higgins, Bradley Hutchings, Lena Kebert, David Paz, Jerrad Read, Douglas Smith, Leah Woods
7 Years: Robert Harbour, Kyle
Henson, Benjamin Kraus, Stephen Potts, Joshua Roberts, Tiffany Schmidt, Daniel Smith, Nancy Vargas, Brian Watson
8 Years: Bradley Beckner, Kyle
Brown, Michelle Ivey, Jason Jewell, Brian King, Patrick McPhillips, Brenna Prestholt, Victor Smith
9 Years: Dexter Cahill, Hector
DeHoyos, Terry Dugar, Charles Engels, Ryan Krull, Kevin Rinear, Christopher Walther, Steven Wisniewski
10
Years: Hector Barrientos, Michael Hancock, Jennifer May, Lisa Powell, Sharon Sexson
Drew Davied, Christopher Davis,
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Team Member Anniversaries
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Years: Robert Aldredge, Timothy Eccles, George Freeman, Cheryl Galler, Christopher Jackson, Charles Price, Eugene Stevens, Montez Tedford, Melissa Tuman, Joel Wilmoth
12 Years: Daniel Giacalone 13 Years: Pedro Balensia,
Richard Buehre, Kurt Kilgore, Penny Wood
14 Years: Kevin Beam, Richard
Hensley, Transito Pedraza, Jonathan Tavernaro
15 Years: Cedric Bonner, Matt
Drake, Joe Mercer, Obed Valdez, Joshua Williams
16 Years: Michael Hensley,
Rafael Hernandez, Crezentia Van Becelaere
17 Years: Johnnie Brown,
Anthony Clark, Lonnie Johnson, Stephanie Mize, Ismael Mondragon
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Years: John DeLeonyPena, Craig Richey
19 Years: Roy Buckhalter, Ernesto Elizondo, Johnny Johnson, David Larch
21 Years: Thomas Cooper,
Charles Karamales
22 Years: Richard Ofiara 23 Years: Anthony Tillman 25 Years: Alex Contreras,
26 Years: Michael Carr, Keri Gognat, Randy Pindell
27 Years: Sherry Miser 30 Years: Claude McGuff 32 Years: Charlie Estes, Bruce
Ferrebee, Kenneth Jordan
33 Years: Rodney King, Michael McGinn, Manfred Nelly
34 Years: Ronald Faulkner 40 Years: James Miller 41 Years: John Herron 42 Years: Roderick Bodfield
Israel Garcia, Bryan Miller, Lupe Ramirez, Roger Schaalma
New Arrivals Nash Dale Karpyak Susan and Adam Karpyak announce the birth of their son, Nash Dale Karpyak, born on November 5, 2020. Nash weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces, and was 21 inches long. Nash was welcomed home by his brother, Jameson, and sister, Eden. Susan is the Terminal Manager at the Fryburg Terminal in North Dakota.
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New Arrivals
Raya Lee Perrigo Lori Vaden is proud to announce the birth of her granddaughter, Raya Lee Perrigo, born on October 24, 2020. Raya weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces, and was 19 inches long. Raya is the daughter of Alex and Deidra Perrigo. Lori is a Conductor/Engineer for the South Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad at the Winfield, Kansas, location.
Iris Kay Holland Michael and Natalie Holland announce the birth of their daughter, Iris Kay Holland, born on November 17, 2020. Iris weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces, and was 18 inches long. Michael is an Engineer for the South Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad at the Winfield, Kansas, location.
Hannah Marie Cox Sean and Bethany Cox announce the birth of their daughter, Hannah Marie Cox, born on November 10, 2020. Hannah weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces, and was 18 3/4 inches long. Hannah was welcomed home by her two brothers, Gabriel and Jayden. Sean is the Senior IT Support Manager at the Pittsburg, Kansas, location.
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