North America - The two giant North American railways where the late Hunter Harrison was most recently CEO have embarked on "apology tours" to assure alienated shippers that the causes of their annoyance with Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP) and later with CSX Corporation (CSX) are being addressed.
 
During his tenure at each of those Big Four railways, the U.S.-born Harrison, who died in December at 73, imposed a cost-cutting regime that was remarkably effective at boosting efficiency and profitability.
 
There was a price to pay for that reinvention.
 
CSX was unpopular with its customers during Harrison's brief CEO stint last summer.
 
The new boss's abrupt closing of rail yards and idling of surplus locomotives caused delays in the CSX system.
 
In a recent interview, Jim Foote, Harrison's successor as CEO of CSX, said, "I go to someone's office with my hat in hand and say, I'm sorry about last year, we screwed up and we didn't do a really good job for you."
 
CP is also mending fences with clients irked during Harrison's four-and-a-half-year CEO tenure there, ending in January of last year when he moved to CSX.
 
Still, the unanticipated profitability that has characterized North American rail in the past two decades can be credited more to Harrison than anyone.
 
By the 1970s, rail operators were so bloated with costs and chronically insensitive to customers that rail's viability was in question.
 
And shippers that are honest with themselves about their earlier ways will tell you that Harrison's "precision railroading" spurred them finally to offer their own customers rapid response times and flexible scheduling, in tandem with Harrison's renaissance at no fewer than four major railways, including Canadian National Railway Company (CN).
 
We're waiting for the Rotman, Western University, or Harvard case study on how this moribund industry was transformed into a consistent money-spinner, a tome that would be instructive to managers across the economy.
 
David Olive.