Senior VP of G&W railroad honored at B&P
BUTLER TWP — Jerry Vest, senior vice president of government and industry affairs at Genesee & Wyoming, a short line railroad holding company, was presented with a community award by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th, at the Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad Company on Thursday, April 25.
Following a luncheon focused on safety, Kelly addressed B&P employees about the importance of the railroad industry and honored Vest as a Pennsylvania 16th Congressional District Community Champion.
G&W is the parent company of B&P. Vest, who resides in Allegheny County, said the company, operating since 1899, owns railroads in 42 states. He has worked in the railroad industry since 1986.
Vest said there was a variety of trains and cars at the beginning of his career. That mix of traffic, he said, has since changed.
“There’s been a tremendous shift to containers, and large railroads can handle those,” he said. “Small railroads like Buffalo & Pittsburgh don’t. There’s been a massive change toward that container traffic, and most of that’s tied with products coming from overseas.”
Some of the material carried by the freight trains on the railroad serving Butler County and the surrounding area includes inbound scrap from Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works for its electric furnace and outbound product, he said in his speech.
“That type of industry is not only important to the small railroads that serve them and their employees, but it’s important to the communities and, in fact, to … our national economy,” Vest told congressional staffers and employees.
Looking to the future, one of Vest’s centers of focus related to government is safety, he said afterward.
“The accident in (East Palestine) pulled everyone back into talking about safety,” Vest said. “Safety is a constant effort at G&W, and I think, honestly, all of the successful freight railroads have to be focused on safety.”
Vest said competition is also a concern. Freight railroads’ primary competitors, he said, are large trucks.
“We’re worried sometimes about bigger trucks not paying their way for their use of public infrastructure,” he said. “Because with the Buffalo & Pittsburgh, we either own or are on a long-term lease.”
Sometimes, the railroad will get a grant from the federal government, but he said the company spends “millions and millions of dollars a year” maintaining the railroad.
As an example, Vest said that this year alone, B&P has spent $6.5 million to renew a bridge over the Allegheny River in Armstrong County.
“That’s just what we have to do,” he said. “We own this infrastructure.”
