“But when you peel all that back and look at how we're running fundamentally, the railroad is running extremely sound fundamentally, and that will absolutely continue in the fourth quarter.”

In context

“'ll continue to have merger costs, probably not quite to the level that we had in the third quarter, but that will be there. But Eric and team, as you've heard, are running very well. And so we feel very good about the ability to be productive, although productivity, as you know, also is challenged when you have volumes coming down. And so the team accepts that challenge knows that they have that there, but that will create a little bit of a headwind. And so that's why when we look at it, would we like to have volumes up and blue skies and 37 degrees, as Jim said, great railroading weather throughout the quarter, you bet. But we will have some challenges, and that's going to make it tough when you think about stacking that up against what was a record quarter for us in the fourth quarter. But when you peel all that back and look at how we're running fundamentally, the railroad is running extremely sound fundamentally, and that will absolutely continue in the fourth quarter. Ken Hoexter: And then specific to the [ rent ] question? Jennifer Hamann: So we just had a couple of small -- I said I called it out $13 million some contract settlements. Those were unique to the third quarter. Operator: Our next question is from the line of Brandon Oglenski with Barclays. Brandon Oglenski: Since you guys announced your merger agreement, it seems like your competitors are maybe collaborating a lot more than they have in the past. Do you view this as potentially a risk, especially as you're going through a pretty complicated process with the STB here? Vincenzo Vena: No. In fact, that proves our point about competition. If you take a look at it, I'm surprised they weren't doing it before, if that was out there. So what happens is when you have a competitor that you know is”