亨特·哈里森正在就如何正確地運營鐵路侃侃而談——所謂正確的方式，就是以亨特·哈里森的方式。這位美國第三大鐵路運營商CSX的新任CEO慢吞吞地說道：“我說這話已經相當謙虛了，我知道怎么運營鐵路，劇本就是我寫的?！?

為了加強語氣，他還特地停頓了一下：“我不會留下失敗的?！?

這是一個周五的下午，72歲的哈里森坐在佛羅里達州威靈頓市的家里，背靠著一張灑滿陽光的沙發。他穿著一件亮紅色的運動服，右手上戴著藍寶石戒指，左手上戴著鉆戒。在我們說話的過程中，哈里森還在用一根細管吸氧氣。這位身材硬朗、頭發花白的老者坐在一扇巨大的落地窗前，窗外便是蘇格蘭風情的棕櫚灘馬球高爾夫球鄉村俱樂部的球場。哈里森的這座地中海風情的豪宅占地超過9200英尺，近幾年，流行天后麥當娜、知名電視人史蒂夫·哈維等都曾在他家兩側租過房子。

在三個多小時的時間里，這位干了一輩子鐵路的鐵路人一直在談CSX的轉型藍圖。他吟詩似地說道：“每一次葬禮都會促進文化的一點改變。”他強調，“清除懷疑論者，給文化解毒”是十分重要的。

談到支持他的那些對沖基金對頭，哈里森表示，他們還是有用的——只要他們不擋了自己的道。在談到頗有爭議的投資人、潘興廣場資本管理公司創始人比爾·艾克曼時，他表示：“我是他的堅定支持者，但每次他提出鐵路方面的建議時，我就會說：‘比爾，請你閉嘴?！?

Hunter Harrison is delivering a lecture on the right way to run a railroad—the Hunter Harrison way. “I say this with the appropriate degree of humility,” drawls the recently named chief executive of CSX (CSX, +0.94%), America’s third-largest rail carrier. “I know how to run a railroad. I wrote the playbook.”

He pauses for emphasis and adds: “I ain’t leavin’ a failure.”

The 72-year-old Harrison is seated on a sofa in a sun-drenched alcove off the dining room of his home in Wellington, Fla., west of Palm Beach. On this Friday afternoon, he is attired in a shiny red tracksuit, with a sapphire glinting on his right ring finger, a diamond on the left. As we talk, Harrison is inhaling oxygen through his nose from a thin tube that circles his scalp and fits over his ears, fed by a tank mounted on wheels. The burly, white-haired executive sits in front of a giant picture window overlooking the seventh hole of the Dunes, a Scottish links–style course at the Palm Beach Polo Golf & Country Club. Pop diva Madonna and TV host Steve Harvey have rented homes on either side of Harrison’s 9,200-square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion in recent years.

For more than three hours, the railroad lifer has been explaining his blueprint for turning around CSX, management pointers tumbling forth in his rolling Tennessee baritone. “Cultures change one funeral at a time,” he intones, emphasizing the importance of “detoxing the culture by weeding out the nonbelievers.”

As for the hedge fund titans who’ve funded his successes, they’re useful, allows Harrison—if they stay out of his way, that is. “I’m a huge Bill Ackman supporter,” says Harrison of the controversial activist investor and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management. “But every time he offers advice on railroading, I just say, ‘Shut up, Bill.’?”

哈里森的狂妄是有資本的，他是美國鐵路界一位獨一無二的人物。過去半個世紀中，這位大學退學生從客運和貨運列車里榨出的利潤要超過任何一家鐵路公司的CEO。FTR運輸情報公司的拉里·格羅斯認為，“他是繼E.H.哈里曼以來最好的鐵路經營者。”（哈里曼是20世紀初美國鐵路帝國的締造者。）哈里森早已不止一次證明過他的能力。中伊利諾斯鐵路公司、加拿大國家鐵路公司、加拿大太平洋鐵路公司……一個個爛攤子在他手中神奇地變成了盈利豐厚的企業，同時也給艾克曼和比爾·蓋茨等投資人帶來了數以幾十億計的回報。

但與這次大手筆相比，那些成功又顯然不算什么了。去年年底，艾克曼在潘興資本的第一副手、知名對沖基金經理保羅·希拉勒與哈里森經過一番謀劃，成功讓哈里森當上了CSX的新任CEO。鐵路界本來以為哈里森就要在加拿大太平洋鐵路公司任上退休，自此告別鐵路業，頤養天年。不過哈里森認為，這樣的想法十分可笑。就在1月19日，哈里森和希拉勒公布了他們的打算后，CSX的股價從36.88美元飆升至45.51美元，狂漲23.4%，市值猛增77億美元。CSX股價的變動也在哈里森和希拉勒的意料之中，CSX果然只得拋棄自己的繼任人計劃，將這位據說患有某種隱疾的古稀老人放到了CEO的位子上。

CSX的股價在頭一輪飆升后還在繼續上漲，已經漲至50美元左右，不過它的漲幅并不穩定。從1月18日到8月初這段時間，CSX的估值整整上漲了120億美元，達到460億美元，漲幅達36%，而同期道瓊斯運輸平均指數只小幅上漲了1.0%。美國鐵路公司CEO、諾?？四戏借F路公司（CSX的主要競爭對手）前任CEO威克·摩爾曼評價道：“我從未見過這樣的情況。投資者看到了他在加拿大國家鐵路公司和加拿大太平洋鐵路公司做了什么，并且認為這一切還會在CSX重演，剩下的已成歷史?！?

實際上，如果哈里森經?？跓o遮攔，說話不經大腦，CSX的股價或許還會漲得更高。在7月19日CSX的二季度收益電話會議上，哈里森“化石燃料已死”的斷言引發了軒然大波。他還補充道，盡管特朗普政府鼓吹煤炭的二次復興，但是作為CSX最大和最賺錢的業務板塊的煤炭，“從長期看必然衰退”。哈里森也沒有保證自己一定能干滿四年的合同，他說：“我只是短期在這兒干，是一個致力于將公司帶到下一個臺階的過渡者。”

就在這次頗有爭議的電話會議后不久，CSX爆出的“客服門”事件多多少少損害了一些哈里森的光輝形象。7月27日，負責監管鐵道交通的美國地面運輸委員會來函，措辭強硬地指出，有貨運商投訴CSX公司“2017年第二季度的服務質量顯著惡化”——這段時期也正是哈里森在CSX大刀闊斧搞改革的時候。但就在這段時間，CSX的運力阻塞問題集中爆發，地面運輸委員會在來函中稱，許多貨運商因此不得不“削減產量甚至暫時中止經營”?？露鞴具M行的一項調查顯示，在3月至7月間，有37%的受訪貨運商轉投了CSX的主要競爭對手諾福克。

隨后，CSX公司又遭遇了另一次重擊——8月初，CSX公司的一列載有危險物品的列車發生了32節車廂脫軌的嚴重事故，迫使賓夕法尼亞州西部的一個小鎮被緊急疏散。

哈里森承認CSX的服務確實存在問題，但他表示問題是暫時的，并且把黑鍋扣到了公司的保守派頭上。他在7月下旬寫給客戶的道歉信中說道：“CSX的變革速度是極快的，雖然公司里的大多數人都擁護公司新政，但不幸的是，有一些人抗拒變革且拒不改正?！?

Harrison can afford to be brash. Because behind the bluster stands a talent as unique as any in corporate America. The college dropout boasts the best record for wringing money from locomotives and boxcars of any railroad CEO in at least half a century. “He’s the best operator since E.H. Harriman,” says Larry Gross, a partner at FTR Transportation Intelligence, invoking the icon who built a railroad empire at the dawn of the 20th century. Harrison has proved his mettle three times, taking the Illinois Central, Canadian National (CN), and Canadian Pacific (CP) railroads from worst-in-class laggards to hugely profitable businesses—earning gigantic returns along the way for investors, including multiple billions for Ackman and Bill Gates.

But those coups pale beside the latest astounding gambit. Late last year, Harrison and hedge fund manager Paul Hilal, who was once Ackman’s top lieutenant at Pershing Square, launched a secret plot to install Harrison as CSX’s new CEO. The railroad world had believed that he was retiring from CP to finally enjoy life away from the tracks. Such a notion, says Harrison, was preposterous. And on Jan. 19, the day after he and Hilal went public with their intentions, CSX’s stock surged from $36.88 to $45.51, or 23.4%, adding $7.7 billion in value. The leap in CSX’s share price worked just as Harrison and Hilal predicted, effectively leaving CSX with no choice but to scuttle its own succession plan and put the septuagenarian with a mysterious ailment at the controls.

After the initial pop, CSX shares continued to rise, advancing to around $50, though the ride has been rocky. All told, as of early August, CSX’s valuation has risen 36% since the Jan. 18 announcement, climbing $12 billion to $46 billion. That compares with a 1.0% increase in the Dow Jones transportation average. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Wick Moorman, the outgoing CEO of Amtrak and former chief of CSX’s main rival, Norfolk Southern. “Investors looked at what he did at CN and CP, projected that he’d do it again, and the rest was history.”

In truth, CSX stock would probably be even higher now were it not for some candid public comments from the unfiltered CEO. During the company’s second-quarter earnings call on July 19, Harrison caused a stir by declaring that “fossil fuels are dead”—adding that coal, CSX’s biggest and most lucrative franchise, “over the long term will decline,” despite the Trump administration’s rhetoric to the contrary. Nor did Harrison provide comfort that he’d complete his four-year contract: “I am a short-timer here, an interim person that’s been trying to get this company to the next step,” he said as well.

Then, shortly after the controversial conference call, severe disruptions in customer service challenged the Harrison mystique, if only a bit. On July 27, the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency regulating railroads, sent CSX a stern letter, citing “complaints from shippers” reporting that “service deteriorated markedly in the second quarter of 2017”—a period when Harrison was transforming the CSX network at warp speed. But during this effort, traffic became so congested, said the STB, that a number of shippers had to “curtail production and temporarily halt operations.” A study by Cowen and Co. found that 37% of shippers surveyed switched freight to CSX’s leading competitor, Norfolk Southern, from March through July.

Then came another shock to the system: A 32-car derailment on a train carrying hazardous materials in early August forced the evacuation of a small town in western Pennsylvania.

Harrison acknowledged the service problems, but called them temporary and outright blamed them on an old guard at CSX that was resisting change. “The pace of change at CSX has been extremely rapid,” he wrote in an apology email to customers in late July. “And while most people in the company have embraced the new plan, unfortunately a few have pushed back and continue to do so.”

據《財富》估算，希拉勒的Mantle Ridge投資公司的投資人通過投資CSX股票已經賺了8億美元。希拉勒本人則表示，CSX最近發生的一些事故并不會讓他心煩，因為在哈里森的“革命”中，一切難免都在變化。他對《財富》表示：“每次亨特在一家鐵路公司搞改革時，都會發生這種事。你在做出這些變革時，不可能不暫時影響到員工和客戶。客戶原本的卸貨時間可能是周一和周午的上午9點，現在卻變成了周二和周四的下午3點。有些改革可以慢慢來，有些卻得快刀斬亂麻，客戶在遭受一些短期影響后，情況就會變得好很多。”

哈里森將他的模式稱為“精確調度鐵路運輸”。細節部分我們一會兒再說。其主要理念是放棄美國鐵路界廣泛使用的“中心輻射型”調度模式，采取一種“點對點”模式，減少?？亢脱b卸時間，大大提高運輸速率。運輸就是資本在鐵路上跑，哈里森的計劃是提高每列火車的貨運量，同時大幅減少用在車頭、車廂和調車設備上的資本。

不過，CSX的網絡還是給哈里森帶來了一個前所未有的挑戰。CSX運營的鐵路線路不是加拿大一望無際的草原和凍土，而是各條線路像蛛網般交織，還要穿越許多人口稠密區域和城市道路。幾十年來，業界普遍認為，在這樣迷宮似的復雜環境中，搞所謂的“精準調度”是行不通的。

哈里森對這種論調嗤之以鼻，他說道：“人們說，CSX的鐵路網是‘意大利面’，所以精準調度搞不成。他們之前也說過加拿大的高山和雪地搞不成精準調度。管他的，我就要嘗嘗這個意大利面！”

哈里森的初期改革成果好壞參半。雖然他通過削減機車和軌道車數量實現了成本的大幅下降，但在改革過程中，CSX也激怒了一些客戶，損失了一些市場份額。將哈里森比作E.H.哈里曼的格羅斯評價道：“他可能搞得太快了，超過了公司的能力。CSX的前景很大程度上將取決于他的改革是否成功。”

Hilal, whose Mantle Ridge investors have, by Fortune’s estimates, so far made $800 million on CSX stock, says he isn’t bothered a whit by the setbacks, because everything’s always in flux in a Harrison revolution. “It’s happened ?every single time Hunter transforms a railroad,” he tells Fortune. “You can’t make these changes without disrupting employees and customers. You tell customers that instead of picking up freight on Monday and Wednesday at 9?a.m., it’s now Thursday and Saturday at 3?p.m. Some of these improvements are best made gradually, but where improvements are best made by ripping the Band-Aid off, the customers suffer some near-term disruption, then things get much better.”

Harrison calls his model “precision scheduled railroading.” We’ll get to the details shortly, but the basic idea involves dismantling the elaborate hub-and-spoke systems widely deployed by U.S. railroads, and installing a “point-to-point” model that ships cargo a lot faster by eliminating lengthy stops and handling. Think of railroading as capital on tracks. Harrison’s blueprint aims at increasing the amount of freight a carrier delivers, and at the same time, hugely reducing the amount of capital measured in numbers of locomotives, cars, and switching equipment.

Still, the CSX network presents a totally new challenge for Harrison and tests him as never before. Unlike the uncluttered system of long, linear routes through prairies and across tundra at CN and CP, CSX traverses a tangled web of tracks that weave through dense urban areas and crisscrossing commuter lines. For decades, the prevailing view has been that precision railroading just won’t work in such a maze.

Harrison scoffs at such doubt. “They say CSX has a dense ‘spaghetti’ network that makes precision scheduled railroading impossible, just like they said the mountains and snow made it impossible in Canada,” says Harrison. “Hell, I’ll eat the spaghetti!”

The early results are mixed. While Harrison has indeed substantially lowered costs by deploying far fewer locomotives and railcars, CSX has also antagonized customers and lost market share in the process. “He may be moving things too fast beyond the ability of the organization,” says Gross, the consultant who compared Harrison to E.H. Harriman. “The jury is very much out on whether he’ll succeed.”

不過如果哈里森的改革成功了，那么它將為美國的基礎產業提供一個難得的寶貴經驗。哈里森相信，即便是在當今的數字化時代，新平臺和自動化已經成為主流，回歸基礎、以運營為中心的理念仍是企業打造出色績效的根本。因此，CSX的改革對于如何重振傳統的資本密集型產業，如何讓其繼續保持美國經濟的火車地位，具有重要的借鑒意義。

那么哈里森為什么要推動這項改革呢？對于一位已經離不開氧氣的老鐵路人，是什么促使他非要推動這樣一項“非常具有顛覆性，很多員工都不想經歷”的改革？

那是因為對于他來說，沒有任何事比推動鐵路產業現代化更能讓他感到快樂。哈里森養了幾匹馬術比賽的賽馬，但他對《財富》表示，即便是賽馬這項運動也讓他覺得無聊。除了鐵路之外，他沒有關心過其他任何職業。哈里森顯然是個怪人，他每天有12個小時跟車輛報廢、車次延誤、路網調度這些事打交道，而這些只會讓他興奮，并不會讓他感到壓力。希拉勒說：“他能把周圍的每個人都搞得筋疲力盡。但是亨特并不是在工作，他比糖果店里的孩子都要開心?！?

哈里森曾是一位高爾夫球的業余高手，但近年來由于身體原因，他已經封桿不玩了。不過哈里森究竟得了什么病，對于他的小圈子之外的人來說仍然是個謎。當他在CSX謀求CEO職位時，公司曾要求哈里森提供個人病歷，并由一名獨立醫生對他進行體檢，但哈里森拒絕了。他只是向董事會出示了他的私人醫生寫的一封信，信里只有兩句話。見過信的人表示已經記不起原話了，大意應該是：“我已經治療了這個病人很長時間了，他適合做這份工作?！?

在兩次接受《財富》長時間采訪的過程中，哈里森曾表示，只有他在梅奧診所的醫生才“搞得懂是怎么回事”。不過他拒絕透露醫生到底是已經確定了病因，并給出了最佳治療方案，還是連病因都沒有診斷清楚。他表示，從去年開始，他由于“氣短”開始吸氧，但他認為吸氧治療只是暫時的?！拔沂遣皇窃诓∏楹棉D之前需要氧氣？是的，這有什么好隱瞞的？我肯定不能打網球了，但我能運營鐵路嗎？當然能！”

If he does succeed, though, that success will likely include within it a crucial lesson for America’s bedrock industries. Harrison believes that, even in this Digital Age, when new platforms and rampant automation seem to dominate, a back-to-basics, operations-focused ethos is still what drives superior performance in business. In that sense, the latest chapter at CSX may provide a case study for how to revive the traditional, capital-intensive industries that remain the locomotive of America’s economy.

So what’s in it for Harrison? What motivates this elderly railroader-on-oxygen to manage another overhaul he describes as something “incredibly disruptive, and that lots of employees don’t want to go through”?

Well, it’s obvious to anyone in his orbit that each successive challenge to modernize this 19th-century industry dwarfs the pleasure he gets from pretty much anything else. Harrison raises prizewinning horses for show jumping—a hobby he tells Fortune is boring. He has never cared about any profession besides running trains on cold steel rails. He’s a strange manner of man for whom wrestling 12 hours a day with wrecks, delays, and network schedules generates excitement, not stress. “He may be running everyone around him ragged,” says Hilal. “But Hunter’s not working, he’s having more fun than a kid in a candy store.”

Once a two-handicap golfer, Harrison parked his clubs because of weakened health. Precisely what medical condition Harrison suffers from remains a mystery to those outside of his inner circle. When he sought the top job at CSX, the company requested that Harrison provide his private medical records and be examined by an independent physician. Harrison declined. He furnished the board with a two-sentence letter from his personal doctor. Those who saw the letter say they don’t recall the exact words, but relate that it read something like this: “I have treated this patient for a long time. He is fit to do the job.”

In two long interviews with Fortune, Harrison would say only that his doctors at the Mayo Clinic are “putting the dots together.” He declined to specify whether the physicians are attempting to determine his precise condition, or map the best treatment for a ailment they’ve already diagnosed. He says he started using oxygen early last year because he gets “short of breath,” but that he believes his reliance on oxygen will be temporary. “Do I need oxygen until I improve some?” he asks. “Yes. Why hide it?” he says. “I can’t play tennis anymore, but can I run a railroad? Hell yes!”

在長時間的訪談中，哈里森全程都在吸氧。不過除此之外，他看起來倒還挺健康的，并無咳嗽或呼吸粗重的跡象。他在工作上顯然還有很多熱情可以燃燒。他每天上午9點到晚上9點都和運營團隊共同作戰，要么是在杰克森維爾的公司總部，要么是在康涅狄格州的家里通過電話遙控指揮。CSX的首席運營官辛迪·桑伯恩說：“他的工作非常緊張，飯菜經常被隨便塞在門邊?！?

哈里森顯然覺得，這樣忙碌的日常生活比退休更有益健康?！拔以浲诵葸^兩年，然后我妻子說：‘你必須得回去工作了!’”哈里森與妻子珍妮已經結婚54年了，他們育有兩個女兒，年紀相差20歲，小女兒凱斯經營著一家馬場。哈里森說：“如果我退休了，我一定會會感到壓力很大，走路慢得像熊一樣?！?

現在的問題是，哈里森能否目前這樣的精神狀態干滿四年的合同。FTR顧問、前CSX研究員諾爾·佩里表示：“我毫不懷疑，只要哈里森的健康狀況保持良好，他在CSX一定會成功的。不過他的健康確實存在很大變數。”

哈里森的父親小歐文·亨特·哈里森的綽號叫做“坦克”，曾是孟菲斯的一名警察，退休后當了一名旅行傳教士。他十幾次時曾經在小聯盟當過棒球投手，后來入伍參加了二戰，被子彈擊中了投球的手臂。像他父親一樣，哈里森年輕時也是個出色的運動員。“我本來可以當職業接球手的。不過有個球探說我長著‘兔子耳朵和紅屁股’。因為看臺上一有喝倒彩的，我就能聽見，而且想跟他們打一架?！?

哈里森的家離老51號公路也就是現在的貓王大道只有半英里遠。哈里森的一個朋友認識貓王的保鏢，靠著這層關系，他還曾經受邀到貓王家的游泳池游過幾次泳。（哈里森回憶道：“貓王總是待在電視室里。”有時貓王會租下孟菲斯電影院搞私人放映，年輕的哈里森偶爾也會坐在空位上與貓王和他的工作人員們一起看電影。“有時一部電影開始放了，貓王不喜歡這部片子，他就會喊‘停!’然后他們就會再放一部，有時會連著折騰兩三次。”

18歲那年，也就是他在孟菲斯州立大學快上大二的那年夏天，哈里森在圣路易斯舊金山鐵路公司找到了一份全職工作，給列車的底盤上油，時薪為2.12美元。在找到鐵路工人的工作后，他很快從大學退學了，每天晚上六點到早上六點，他要在一間悶熱的調度塔里調度火車，但這段經歷更加深了他對鐵路事業的熱愛。哈里森回憶道，每次夜班都是靠“一飯盒的胃病藥、四包萬寶路頂過來的，一晚上什么都不吃。

In our many hours of talks, Harrison was on oxygen the entire time, but otherwise seemed healthy, never coughing or breathing heavily.

On the job, it’s clear that he has energy to burn. He huddles with his operating team from around 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., either at the Jacksonville headquarters, or by phone, mainly from his Connecticut estate. “He’s so intense that food is shoved under the door,” says Cindy Sanborn, CSX’s chief operating officer.

Clearly, Harrison feels that this daily regime is less hazardous to his health than retirement. “I retired once for two years,” he recalls, “and my wife said, ‘You’ve got to get back to work!’?” Harrison and his wife, Jeannie, have been married 54 years. The couple have two daughters 20 years apart in age, the younger of whom, Cayce Harrison Judge, runs the horse farms. “If I retired again,” says Harrison, “I’d be totally stressed and pacing like a bear.”

The question is whether Harrison can complete his four-year contract with his current vigor, if at all. “I have no doubt that Harrison will succeed if his health holds out,” says Noel Perry, a former CSX researcher and now a consultant with FTR. “But that’s a big ‘if.’?”

Harrison’s father, Ewing Hunter Harrison Jr., nicknamed “Tank,” was a Memphis police officer who retired to become a traveling preacher. He had pitched in the minor leagues as a teenager before being shot in his throwing arm in World War II. Like his dad, Ewing Hunter III was an outstanding athlete. “I could have been a professional catcher,” he recalls, “except for what a scout called my ‘rabbit ears and red ass.’ I heard every catcall from the bleachers and wanted to fight about it.”

The Harrison home was half a mile from Graceland on the old Highway 51, now Elvis Presley Boulevard. A buddy of Hunter’s who knew one of the King’s bodyguards got his friend invited to swim in Elvis’s pool a couple of times (“Elvis was always in the TV room,” Harrison recalls). When Presley rented the Memphian movie theater for private screenings, the young Harrison occasionally got to sit behind the empty rows separating Elvis and his entourage from the other guests. “A movie would start playing, and Elvis would decide he didn’t like it and yell, ‘Cut!’ And they’d start another movie, two or three times!” he says.

At age 18, the summer before his sophomore year at Memphis State, Harrison took a full-time job at $2.12 an hour squirting oil on the undercarriages of railcars for the old St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, known as “the Frisco,” leaving college soon after starting on the railroad. It was his stint dispatching locomotives and railcars on the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift from a sweltering tower—the railroading version of air traffic control—that cemented his love for the world of switches and hump yards. Fueling those graveyard shifts, Harrison recalls, were “lunch boxes full of Rolaids, four packs of Marlboros, and nothing to eat.”

“如果你不喜歡這份工作，它一定會把你逼瘋的。”他說：“在學校里，我會希望時間過得快一些。但是在調度塔里，我卻希望時間能慢下來。我在這四年里學到的東西比過去50年里學到的東西都多?！?

幾年的基層鐵路工人生涯讓哈里森領悟了一個事實，那就是關于鐵路，公司總部的那些官僚還沒有火車站的鐵路工人懂得多。他還發現，鐵路能不能盈利，取決于火車的調度、維修、人員分配能不能精準且同步地完成。一套高效率的制度只要在一個站場建立，就能推廣到幾十個其他場站。

1980年，伯靈頓北方公司（現改名為北伯靈頓鐵路公司，為巴菲特的伯克希爾哈撒韋公司所有）收購了哈里森所在的圣路易斯舊金山鐵路公司。哈里森也被晉升為一名高級運營經理，不過他與時任CEO杰拉德·格林施坦因發生了矛盾。哈里森回憶道：“他認為我太桀驁不馴了。他對我說：‘你的風險太高了，我們現在不需要風險。’”1989年，哈里森的職業生涯迎來了轉機。這一年，一家私募公司與中伊利諾斯鐵路公司進行了融資收購，后者是一家經營芝加哥到新奧爾良之間鐵路業務的中型鐵路公司。哈里森火線就任該公司一把手，負責拯救這家瀕臨破產的公司。通過他的精確調度改革，中伊利諾斯鐵路公司成功從破產邊緣起死回生，實現了大量盈利。1999年，該公司以24億美元的價格被出售給加拿大國家鐵路公司。這個價格整整是10年前那家私募公司收購它時的16倍。

1995年，作為“王室產業”被國家把持了76年的加拿大國家鐵路公司迎來了私有化。然而私有化后的加拿大國家鐵路公司仍然受累于官僚主義、工人效率低下等國企的常見弊病。2003年，哈里森從首席運營官升任該公司CEO，這些頑疾立即成了他開刀的目標。SMART聯盟運輸部前官員蒂姆·西科德回憶道：“在哈里森的領導下，公司的企業文化110%地轉變了。”

“If you didn’t love it, it would drive you crazy,” he says. “In school, I’d pray for the clock to speed up. In the tower, I’d pray for it to slow down. I learned more in those four years than in the last 50.”

For Harrison, the epiphany was that the folks running rail yards knew far more about railroading than the bureaucrats at headquarters. Harrison learned then that a railroad’s profitability was determined by the precise, hands-on synchronizing of schedules, repairs, and crew assignments organized right in the rail yard—and that efficiencies achieved in one rail yard could be spread to dozens of others.

In 1980, the Burlington Northern (now the BNSF, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway) purchased the Frisco. Harrison rose to become a top operating manager, but clashed with CEO Gerald “Jerry” Grinstein, later chief of Delta Air Lines. “I was too much of a ‘kick ’em in the ass’ type for Jerry,” recalls Harrison. “He told me, ‘You’re just too high risk, and we don’t need risk right now.” His breakthrough opportunity came in 1989, when a private equity group orchestrated an LBO for the Illinois Central, a midsize carrier running from Chicago to New Orleans, and installed Harrison to lead a rescue operation. The new boss deployed scheduled railroading to steer the IC from near bankruptcy to immense profitability, culminating in a 1999 sale to Canadian National for $2.4 billion, 16 times what the private equity group had paid a decade earlier.

Privatized in 1995 after 76 years as a state-owned “Crown corporation,” CN remained hobbled by bureaucracy and poor worker productivity in the rail yards, all fat targets for Harrison, who rose from COO to CEO in 2003. “Workers could be lazy and carefree doing their jobs, and the bosses weren’t hanging over their heads,” recalls Tim Secord, a former official in the SMART union’s transportation division. “Under Harrison, the culture changed 110%.”

他嚴苛的改革和沖動的性格與蒙特利爾排外的商業精英們格格不入。他的法語從來沒有超過“你好”的水平。加拿大國家鐵路公司前CEO保羅·特利爾回憶道，有一陣子，他的同事們甚至想把哈里森關在一個籠子里?！安贿^他每次都能跑出來，所以我們又得把他抓回去?！辈贿^哈里森再次帶領加拿大鐵路公司實現了驚人的逆轉。從他1999年到該公司任職，到2010年離職，加拿大國家鐵路公司的股價從4.5美元漲到了34美元，創造了260億美元的市值。（比爾·蓋茨的私人投資機構和比爾梅琳達蓋茨基金會是目前該公司的最大股東。2000年以來，他們通過投資該公司已獲得了70億美元以上的收益。）哈里森說，2008年蓋茨曾開玩笑地對他說：“我去年的稅款都是你幫我付的！”

即便如此，哈里森與加拿大國家鐵路公司最后還是分道揚鑣了。哈里森表示，在2010年年底，盡管董事長私下里詢問了他是否愿意留任，但董事會最終還是拒絕續簽他的合同。說起這事，哈里森至今仍恨恨不平：“有幾個董事抱怨說，我用公司的飛機用得太頻繁了，花出去的錢‘貴得可憎’。”

正當哈里森在他的馬場里窮極無聊時，希拉勒卻在研究加拿大國家鐵路公司的競爭對手——加拿大太平洋鐵路公司。希拉勒是潘興廣場資本公司的合伙人，他和潘興資本的負責人比爾·艾克曼是哈佛賽艇隊的隊友兼室友?！凹幽么筇窖箬F路公司是當時北美地區業績最差的鐵路公司，而加拿大國家鐵路公司卻是業績最好的。我很快意識到，問題出在管理上?！毕＠障嘈?，哈里森既然能治好加拿大國家鐵路公司的病，治好加拿大太平洋鐵路公司也一定不成問題。于是他給哈里森打了電話。

His draconian reforms and prickly personality irked Montreal’s clubby business elite. His French never advanced past, “Bonjour, y’all.” Paul Tellier, the former CEO of CN, remarked long ago that his colleagues would try to keep Hunter in a cage, “but he gets out every so often, so we have to put him back in.” Once again, though, Harrison produced a fantastic turnaround. From his arrival at the start of 1999 until his departure at the close of 2010, CN’s shares roared from $4.50 to $34, creating $26 billion in market cap. (Bill Gates’ personal investment arm and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust are now CN’s largest shareholders; since around 2000, they’ve reaped over $7 billion in gains.) Harrison says that in 2008, Gates told him, “You paid my taxes last year!”

Even so, Harrison and CN split on a sour note. At the end of 2010, the board declined to renew his contract, even though the chairman had informally asked if he’d stay on, Harrison says. “Some directors complained I’d been using the company plane too much, and it was ‘obscenely expensive,’?” says Harrison, still rankled by the slight.

As Harrison languished and fought boredom at his equestrian estate in Connecticut, Hilal was studying railroads—specifically, CN’s rival, Canadian Pacific. Hilal was a partner at Pershing Square Capital, headed by Bill Ackman, whom he met rowing crew at Harvard and became his roommate. “CP was by far the worst-performing railroad in North America, and the most similar railroad, CN, was the best,” Hilal says. “I quickly realized the difference was management.” So he called Harrison, who he reckoned could fix CP the way he’d rebuilt its chief competitor.

在秘密購買了加拿大太平洋鐵路公司的大量股份后（潘興資本最終購入了該公司14.2%的股份），艾克曼和哈希勒的潘興資本公司于2012年初發動了一場“代理人戰爭”，成功地攫取了加拿大太平洋鐵路公司的控制權，并安排哈里森當上了這家公司的CEO。不過上任的第一天，這家公司就給了哈里森一個下馬威，該公司位于卡爾加里的總部空無一人，所有人都去參加卡爾加里牛仔節了。這個節日適逢100周年大慶，不僅有各種表演，還有花車巡游?！奥犝f我來了，手機亮成一片，人們從酒吧里亂糟糟地涌出來，穿著靴子，戴著草帽和圍巾，你肯定沒見過這樣歡迎新老板的?！?

為了贏得公司人的信任，他把之前在加拿大國家鐵路公司行之有效的一套制度搬了過來——比如舉辦“亨特訓練營”。這種訓練營每年會舉辦20次之多，每次哈里森都會邀請20多個年輕的經理人，到加拿大和美國的度假勝地參加為期三天的會議，由他親自在白板前面給他們講課。他還要求高管們既要當經理人，也要當工程師和指揮員。這樣一旦發生罷工，他們就可以暫時替代工人的角色。就這樣，約有1000多名公司經理人獲得了運營、調度、維修列車的資質。在2015年年初的一次罷工中，這些高官赤膊上陣，維修的維修，調度的調度，確保了鐵路的正常運轉。“幾個工會的人看著一位經理戴著工程師的帽子，指揮一列火車從60英里的時速停穩，吃驚地將眼睛瞪得老大，并且吹起了口哨?！闭怯捎诮浝韨冊谛陆巧媳憩F良好，使得這場罷工僅僅持續了幾天就草草結束了。

為了提高公司高管的運營水平，他將公司總部從卡爾加里市中心搬到了離城市10英里的一座重新裝修的列車修理廠。在他就任CEO的頭兩年里，加拿大太平洋鐵路公司的市值增長了190億美元，也就是平均每個月增長8億美元。從潘興公司獲得該公司所有權到2016年8月退出股東的五年里，加拿大太平洋鐵路公司的股價增長了200%，達到每股150美元，潘興公司的收益投資達到了26億美元，而當年它收購該公司股份總共只花了10億多美元。

像以前一樣，哈里森再次成功地大幅縮減了設備和人力，但卻能運送更多的貨物。而大幅的裁員自然也再次引燃了工人的怒火。加拿大火車工聯會主席道格·芬森說：“他明目張膽地向公會宣戰，毫不關心工人的利益。他關心的只有股東的利益，他的長處就是殺伐決斷?！?盡管許多工會領袖都鄙視哈里森，但很多人不得不承認他在管理上是有本事的，并且佩服他近乎粗魯的坦率。SMART聯盟前官員西科德表示：“你可能不喜歡他的話，但這家伙從不說謊。不管你喜不喜歡他，他都是一個懂得經營鐵路的人?！?

After secretly purchasing a big stake in CP (it eventually bought 14.2% of CP shares), Ackman and Hilal’s Pershing fund, in early 2012, launched a five-month proxy battle to take control of CP. They prevailed and installed Harrison as chief executive. On his first day on the job in early July 2012, the Calgary headquarters was strangely empty. Executives were off frolicking at the Calgary Stampede, a rowdy festival of rodeos and covered chuck-wagon races, celebrating its 100th anniversary. “Word got out that I’d arrived,” says Harrison. “Cell phones are blazing. People are pouring out of the bars, getting mouthwashed, and showing up in turned-up boots, straw cowboy hats, and bandannas. It was the damnedest welcome for a new boss you ever saw.”

To win believers, he brought to CP what had worked so well at CN—a template that included off-site seminars known as “Hunter Camps.” As many as 20 times a year, Harrison invited two dozen young managers to three-day sessions at resorts in Canada and the U.S., where he’d lecture his troops with messianic intensity in front of a whiteboard. He also demanded that executives be trained as engineers, conductors, and other trades so they could replace workers in case of a strike. All told, 1,000 CP managers were certified to operate, switch, and repair trains, and during a walkout in early 2015, the executives kept the railroad chugging. “The union guys’ eyes got awful big when they saw a train coming down the track at 60 mph, with a manager in an engineer’s cap at the controls, blowing the whistle while they’re holding picket signs,” Harrison recalls with relish. He credits the managers’ new role with helping to end the strike after just a few days.

Harrison was so determined that the corporate brass be steeped in operations that he moved the headquarters from a glass tower in downtown Calgary to a renovated repair shop in a prairie rail yard 10 miles out of town. In his first 24 months on the job, CP’s market cap rose by $19 billion, or $800 million a month. Over the five-year span from the start of Pershing’s ownership push to its exit as shareholder in August 2016, CP shares rose 200% to $150, handing Pershing a $2.6 billion gain on an original investment of just over $1 billion.

As usual, Harrison succeeded in carrying more freight with a lot less equipment and people. And as usual, the big shrink in the workforce roused ire. “He declared war on the unions and screwed the workers,” says Doug Finnson, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, which represents rail workers in Canada. “All he cares about is the shareholders. His forte is slash and burn.” Though many union leaders despise Harrison, others acknowledge his managerial skills and respect his straight, if brutally blunt, talk. “You may not like what he says, but the guy does not lie,” says Secord, the former SMART official. “And whether you like him or not, he knows how to run a railroad.”

盡管哈里森是靠金融家的力挺才在加拿大太平洋鐵路公司和CSX上位的，但哈里森經常對他們的建議表示不屑。“艾克曼和希拉勒經常說：‘我們是杰出的金融人才，金融的事由我們替你做’，仿佛是一種恩賜一樣。哈佛畢業生的優越感從他們每個毛孔里都噴了出來。”哈里森說，艾克曼和希拉勒曾聯合董事會給他推薦了兩個財務總監，不過這兩人很快先后離職了。“我后來選了一個自己的內部人，他干得很好。這肯定讓他倆覺得很不好受。”（該公司五年換了五任財務總監。哈希勒表示，要想找一個讓董事會和哈里森都滿意的財務總監，簡直比登天還難。）

哈里森僅僅花了兩年時間就改變了加拿大太平洋鐵路公司的運營面貌，到2014年年中，他又開始尋找新的挑戰了。但到了第二年，他的身體卻出了兩個大毛病。一是腿部血栓需要上支架，二是感染了嚴重的肺炎。哈里森表示，這兩個毛病與他當前的病情并無關系。（哈里森曾經抽煙抽得很兇。在1998年做了心內直視手術后，就再也沒有吸過煙。）

哈里森、希拉勒和艾克曼雄心勃勃地想建立美國一個業務橫跨北美大陸的鐵路公司，為此他們曾力求推動加拿大太平洋鐵路公司與美國東海岸的兩大鐵路公司之一進行合并。但他們與CSX和諾?？四戏借F路公司的談判相繼告吹了。不過希拉勒并未灰心。雖然哈里森2017年6月就要退休了，而且受競業禁止合同所限，哈里森也無法為存在競爭關系的鐵路公司工作，但希拉勒仍然認為，鐵路行業仍有很多潛力尚待哈里森去挖掘。

2016年1月希拉勒離開潘興資本和加拿大太平洋鐵路公司董事會后，他立即策劃了一個將哈里森從加拿大太平洋鐵路公司“解放”出來的方案。這個方案其實極其簡單——哈里森聲明放棄他的退休福利，這給加拿大太平洋鐵路公司省下了8400萬美元的巨款。而希拉勒新創立的投資基金Mantle Ridge則表示愿意給哈里森掏這筆錢。希拉勒表示：“我們的做法就是從一家公司里收購CEO。這種事在商業史上還是破天荒頭一次?！?

此前，希拉勒的Mantle Ridge公司已經融資12億美元收購了CSX公司5%的股權，目的就是為了將哈里森推上CSX的CEO寶座。該投資集團還想指定六位董事，確保哈里森“在董事會里得到足夠的支持，以便在無可避免的改革陣痛到來時，他能夠克服內部的阻力。”（最終，該投資集團獲得了董事會的五席。）

隨著CSX股價的上漲，希拉勒和哈里森手里的籌碼也更多了。在股市的推動力，就連富達和路博邁等機構也開始推動哈里森就任CEO。

接下來的7個星期，希拉勒和CSX就一些條件產生了分歧。但對于哈里森來說，這種拖延是難以忍受的。他在媒體上抱怨道：“雙方都是故作姿態，各打各的牌。”他也絲毫不掩飾對希拉勒的不滿。希拉勒則表示：“亨特總有一種緊迫感，對于公司改革來說，這種緊迫感也是一種重要資產。比如如果有一件事應該做，他恨不得當天下午就做好。他跟我說了三四次：‘股價已經漲得太高了，他們的利潤正在下跌。我怎么還沒坐到那張椅子上？’”

在47天后，也就是3月6日，哈里森終于如愿以償了。

在哈里森看來，CSX正是他最喜歡的那種目標，業績慘淡，反應遲鈍，最適合搞精確調度改革。他對《財富》說道：“CSX是美國和加拿大六大鐵路公司里績效最低的一家。經過我的整治，它要么是最好的，要么就干脆關門了事。” CSX公司經營著21000英里的鐵路，其業務輻射密西西比河以東的23個州，還延伸到了加拿大的魁北克和蒙特利爾。與美國西部的鐵路公司（如聯合太平洋鐵路公司、北伯靈頓鐵路公司等）相比，CSX以及地區內的主要競爭對手諾?？说臉I務要更加依賴于煤炭運輸，比如將煤炭從賓西法尼亞、俄亥俄、西弗吉尼亞等地的煤礦運到大型發電廠。不過自2011年以來，CSX的煤炭業務收入已從37億美元下降到18億美元，下降幅度達51%。

煤炭收入的減少打破了CSX原有的經濟平衡。它運每一噸貨的成本都要高于那些運營得較好的鐵路公司——尤其是經哈里森改造過的那些鐵路公司。CSX雖然經常把提高效率掛在嘴邊，但基本上都成了空喊口號。2016年，它的“運行率”（也就是成本和收益比，是鐵路行業生產率的基本指標之一）僅為69.4%，算是一個業界中游的水平。這個數字要比加拿大太平洋鐵路公司高出11%，比加拿大國家鐵路公司高14%。哈里森稱，要在三年內將運行率下降到55%左右。如果能夠實現，CSX的年利潤將在去年的17.1億美元的基礎上翻一番，達到30億美元以上。

哈里森敏銳地看到了公路運輸業的弱點。他表示，很多卡車貨運公司都運營得很艱難?！八麄児筒坏剿緳C，高速公路的路況現在也不好。我是不愿意在95號公路上開車的，感覺跟賽車差不多。我們可以以更低的價格跟公路運輸搶業務?！?

有些業內資深人士質疑他的這一戰略是否有效。比如FTR顧問格羅斯表示：“公路運輸要比鐵路靈活得多。我們從沒見過運輸業的趨勢從鐵路到公路再到鐵路的情況?！辈贿^他認為，哈里森更有可能做他一直以來最擅長的——通過快速激烈的重組來大幅削減成本。

哈里森的改革藍圖依然是“精準調度”——在盡量短的時間里，將煤炭、化學品、木材等從產地運到客戶的工廠或倉庫?？s短運輸時間意味著一條鐵路只需要同樣多甚至更少的列車和工人，就可以運輸更多的貨物。哈里森稱之為“讓資產出汗”，也就是讓火車每天多跑幾個小時，盡量縮短他們停在那里不產生價值的時間。

為此，哈里森將CSX的復雜的“中心輻射型”系統改革成了“點對點”系統。以前為了削減成本，CSX公司會選擇給一列火車多掛幾個車廂。這樣一來，開火車的仍然只有兩個人，但多拉了不少貨物，而且燃料成本也只是略有增加。但一列火車上往往拉有從紙張到化學品的多種貨物，甚至每節車廂的貨物都不一樣，CSX就得將列車由各地車站開向12個駝峰調車場，這些調車場分布在美國東部的奧爾巴尼和伯明翰等地。在調車場里，車廂會與車頭分離，由軌道車推上一座人工的小山——即“駝峰”。之后在重力作用下，車廂會滑下小山，由電腦控制系統引導各節車廂，分別進入小山下面的各條軌道。一列列新的火車就這樣“造”出來了，貨物也就被成功地分類了。

哈里森認為駝峰調車場早該被掃入歷史的垃圾堆了，原因有二。首先，駝峰船廠的運營成本非常高。這些設施都是幾十年前建造的，需要不斷更新和維護蛛網般錯綜復雜的軌道。另外上文說的重力推動系統雖然聽起來科技含量不高，但對資本的要求卻是極高的。車廂必須要以極精確的速度在列車尾部耦合。比如，如果一節載有汽車零部件的車廂移動得太快了，它說不定會把前面的幾節等待的車廂（比如油罐車）頂出軌道。為了安全、順利地組裝列車，鐵軌上都有一套安裝了傳感器的“減速裝置”，以計算車速，以及根據其長度和重量必須保持的速度。然后減速系統會正確地分配制動力到車廂上。

其次，哈里森認為，對駝峰調車場的依賴，本身就是給CSX的發展踩了“剎車”，拖慢了CSX網絡的運行速度。在駝峰模式下，貨車從調車場出來后，并不會直接駛往目的地城市，而是要先進入另一個駝峰調車場再次組車，如此幾遍，直到它到達離終點站最近的一個駝峰調車場，最后再重新組車、換人，駛往最后的終點。哈里森指出，列車每停靠在一個駝峰調車場重新組車，就要比“精確調度”模式多耽擱整整一天。因此，他將CSX的調度模式改變成了“點對點”模式，這種模式有點像美國西南航空公司的調度模式。而西南航空也是憑借這種獨特的調度模式，使其飛機每天可以比競爭對手多飛好幾個小時。

哈里森的戰略目標是清晰的，不過到目前為止，CSX的執行仍有些磕磕絆絆。一方面，CSX的資本成本確實大幅下降，它的車頭數量從3900臺減少到3000臺，整整削減了近四分之一。不過雖然CSX砍掉了不少車頭，關掉了不少駝峰調車場（該公司已經將12個駝峰調車場中的8個改成了非樞紐性的集散站），但這也打亂了一些客戶習以為常的貨運日程，很多客戶跟不上哈里森的速度來調整生產和貨運安排。比如某地原本每周有五天發油罐車，每星期可發20節，現在卻變成了每天可發14到15節。一時間交通也陷入了混亂。因此，CSX網絡的整體速度在3到6月雖然上升了，但從7月開始卻有所下降。

當然，哈里森身邊的人早就見過這種情況了，他們并不擔心，哈里森本人更不在意。

6月下旬，加拿大太平洋鐵路公司的前董事們在棕櫚灘的浪花酒店為他們的英雄舉辦了一場晚宴。參加晚宴的人中既有多年支持他的老友比爾·艾克曼和保羅·希拉勒，也有哈里森的徒弟、現任太平洋鐵路公司CEO基思·克利爾。克利爾回憶道：“亨利在屋里四處走動，回憶起他第一次見到我們的場景，并且感謝我們邀請他來。”最主要的是，他贊揚了老友們將他從退休生活里“拯救”出來的遠見。哈里森說，現在他又踏上了職業生涯中最具挑戰的一段旅程，但在這段旅程中，他可能會創造比以往更多的財富。他說：“這是一段很好的旅程，但也是我最后一段旅程?！保ㄘ敻恢形木W）

本文另一版本以《最后的鐵路大亨》為題刊載于2017年9月1日刊的《財富》雜志。

譯者：樸成奎

Though it was financiers who installed him at CP and later at CSX, Harrison often bristled at their counsel. “Ackman and Hilal were saying, ‘We’re brilliant finance guys; we’ll do the finances for you,’ like it was a gift,” says Harrison. “Their Harvardness was oozing out of their pores.” According to Harrison, Ackman and Hilal, along with the board, recommended two CFOs, both of whom quickly departed. “I finally picked my own internal person, who worked out great. Then I took a needle and stuck it in Bill and Paul.” (The company had five CFOs in five years; Hilal says it was extremely difficult to find one that could satisfy both the board and Harrison.)

It took just two years for Harrison to transform CP’s operations, and by mid-2014, he was looking for a new challenge. But the next year brought two medical challenges—a blockage in his legs that required an operation to implant stents and a severe bout of pneumonia, conditions that, he says, were unrelated to his current health issues. (Once a heavy smoker, Harrison underwent open-heart surgery in 1998, and never smoked again.)

Harrison, Hilal, and Ackman teamed up to try to create the first major transcontinental railroad, exploring a merger between CP and one of the two major U.S. carriers on the East Coast. But talks with CSX and Norfolk Southern foundered. Hilal was undeterred, confident there was still plenty of buried value in the industry that Harrison—who was scheduled to retire in June 2017 and who, additionally, was bound by a tight noncompete agreement that precluded him from working for rival railroads—could unearth.

So Hilal, after exiting Pershing and the CP board in January 2016, hatched a plan to liberate Harrison from CP. The scheme was surprisingly simple: Harrison would forgo his retirement benefits, saving CP a mammoth $84 million—and Hilal’s new investment fund, Mantle Ridge, would make Harrison whole. “The idea was to buy the CEO from the company,” says Hilal, claiming with some bravado that “it had never happened in the annals of corporate history.”

Mantle Ridge had raised $1.2 billion for a single investment, to buy a 5% stake in CSX—and install Harrison as CEO. The investment group also wanted to designate six directors, representation that would ensure that Harrison “had sufficiently strong board support to overcome internal resistance” to the wrenching change that would inevitably come, Hilal says. (The group got five board seats.)

As CSX’s share price jumped on the news, Hilal and Harrison suddenly had their leverage. The windfall prompted such institutions as Fidelity and Neuberger Berman to push for naming Harrison CEO.

Over the next seven weeks, Hilal and CSX sparred over terms. But for Harrison, the delay was intolerable. It was an exercise in “chest pounding,” he groused in the press. “Both sides were posturing and playing games,” says Harrison, who didn’t hide his displeasure from Hilal. “Hunter has an incredible sense of urgency, which is a major asset in transforming companies,” says Hilal. “If it makes sense to do, it should be done this afternoon. He said to me three or four times, ‘The stock is way up, and their profits are down. How come I’m not in the chair yet?’?”

That happened 47 days later, on March 6.

Harrison viewed CSX as just the kind of target he relishes, a sluggish underachiever ripe for precision scheduled railroading. “CSX is the least efficient carrier of all the six majors in the U.S. and Canada,” he tells Fortune. “And when I get through, it will be right there with the best, or awful close.” CSX operates 21,000 miles of track that span 23 states east of the Mississippi and extend into Quebec and Montreal. Along with its regional rival Norfolk Southern, CSX is far more dependent on coal shipments flowing from mines in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia to the big utilities, than are the Western carriers, Union Pacific and BNSF. Since 2011, CSX’s coal revenues have dropped by 51%, from $3.7 billion to $1.8 billion.

The loss of coal revenue changed the economics for the railroad: It was spending more to deliver each comparable ton of freight than the best-run railroads, notably those transformed by Hunter Harrison. CSX kept promising huge efficiency gains that mostly didn’t happen. Its “operating ratio,” cost as a share of revenue (which is the industry’s prime benchmark for productivity), was a mediocre 69.4% in 2016. That’s 11 percentage points higher than CP’s, and 14 points above CN’s. Harrison’s stated goal is to drive that number into the mid-50s within three years, a feat that would nearly double CSX profits from $1.71 billion last year to well over $3 billion.

Harrison sees an opening in another transportation industry weakness. Trucking companies are in trouble, he says. “They can’t hire drivers. The highways are crumbling. I won’t get on I-95—it’s like NASCAR. We can offer truck-competitive services at lower rates.”

Some industry veterans doubt he’ll pull that off. “Trucking is so much more flexible than rail that we’ve never seen a major shift from rail to truck for cargoes moving in railcars, what Harrison’s targeting, as opposed to containers and trailers,” says Gross, the consultant at FTR. But Harrison, he says, is far more likely to do what he always does—a fast and furious reorg that radically lowers costs.

The blueprint for this, once again, is precision railroading: dispatching individual shipments of coal, chemicals, or lumber in the shortest possible times from their origin at the supplier’s depot or factory to the customer’s warehouse or mill. Shrinking delivery times means that a railroad can deliver the same or greater volumes of freight with far smaller fleets of railcars and locomotives and far fewer workers. It’s what Harrison calls “sweating the assets” by keeping locomotives and railcars moving a lot more hours a day, minimizing the time they sit idle in rail yards.

To accomplish that, Harrison is shifting CSX’s complex “hub-and-spoke” system to “point-to-point” delivery. The railroad used to lower costs per carload shipped by running long trains. The idea was that because a longer train requires the same two-person crew as a shorter one, it saves labor costs, while burning only slightly more fuel. But to ensure that “merchandise” trains hauling a mixture of everything from paper to chemicals had as many cars as possible, CSX had to funnel blocks of cars from sundry local stations into 12 hubs, known as “hump yards,” dotting the Eastern U.S. from Albany to Birmingham. At the hump yards, the cars are unhooked from arriving trains and pushed by locomotives over a man-made hill—that’s the hump. Propelled by gravity, the cars roll down the hill, and a computerized switching system directs each car, one at a time, onto individual tracks at the bottom. That’s how trains are “built,” and cargoes sorted.

Harrison regards the hump yard system as a rusty relic. The reason is twofold. First, hump yards are extremely expensive to operate. The facilities were built decades ago and require constant upgrades and maintenance on their aging spiderwebs of tracks. They’re also far more capital-intensive than their gravity-driven system would imply. The cars must roll at precisely the right speed to couple with the car at the end of the train. If a boxcar carrying auto parts moves too fast, it could derail its waiting mate, say, a tank car. To safely and smoothly assemble trains, a system of “retarders” attached to the tracks deploys sensors to calculate the speed the car must maintain based on its weight and length. The retarders then apply the correct braking pressure to the car.

Second, Harrison reckons that relying mostly on hump yards is itself a braking system, slowing the speed of the CSX network. The rub is that cars from one hump yard frequently go not directly to their city or town of destination, but to another hump yard, until they reach the hump yard closest to the destination, where they’re switched to locomotives and crews based at that hump yard for final delivery. Harrison figures that each stop in a hump yard delays deliveries a full day compared with times under precision railroading. Hence, he’s moving from hub-and-spoke to a point-to-point system, similar to the model deployed by Southwest Airlines, which allows the carrier to keep its planes flying far more hours a day than its rivals.

The strategy is clear. But so far, implementation has been erratic, as demonstrated by the mixed metrics. On the plus side, CSX is moving cargo with a lot less capital: Its number of locomotives, for example, has decreased by a fourth, from 3,900 to 3,000. But as CSX shrinks its fleet and shutters hump yards—it has already converted eight of 12 hump yards to nonhub terminals—it’s also radically shuffling customer schedules. Customers can’t always adjust production and loading at the same lightning pace that Harrison is changing their pickup and delivery schedules. They’re struggling to adapt to

the Harrison-mandated schedules designed to run a faster, leaner railroad. For example, he’s demanding customers shift from dispatching, say, 20 tank cars five days a week to 14 or 15

every day. As a result, traffic is snarling. After rising between March and June, the overall speed of CSX’s network declined starting in July.

Alumni of the school of Harrison have all seen this before, of course, and they aren’t worried. Nor is Harrison.

In late June, former directors at Canadian Pacific feted their hero at a dinner held the historic Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, the creation of another railroad legend, Henry Flagler. Among the attendees were the moneymen who had been backing the guest of honor for years, Bill Ackman and Paul Hilal, along with Harrison protégé and CP’s current CEO, Keith Creel. “Hunter went around the room and talked about how he first met us, and thanked us for getting him here,” recalls Creel. Most of all, he praised the crew for vision they’d shown in pulling him out of retirement—and then keeping him out. Now, claimed Harrison, he’d embarked on the most challenging journey of his career, but with the potential to create more riches than any of the others. “It’s been a great run,” intoned Harrison, “but this is my final trip.”

A version of this article appears in the Sept. 1, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline “The Last Railroad Tycoon.” ?