General Public

Chemical Transportation Safety Pinnacle Award

The Award's Inception and Philosophy

Union Pacific is committed to providing the safest and most efficient rail transportation service in the industry. That commitment includes striving to eliminate chemical releases from rail cars, which remain a significant problem in our industry, resulting in service delays, employee injuries, environmental damage and unnecessary cleanup costs for both Union Pacific and our customers.

These episodes, known as non-accident releases (NARs), make up the largest portion of Union Pacific hazardous materials incidents. NARs can be prevented through aggressive efforts to identify the root causes of these occurrences, and by the development of systems that ensure continual adherence to proper safety procedures.

In 1996, UP initiated the Chemical Transportation Safety Pinnacle Award as part of our NAR reduction program. This award, instituted after meeting with and considering the needs of our chemical shippers, was designed to increase shipper awareness of NARs by recognizing those shippers who take an instrumental role in preventing NAR incidents. The award program, open to all chemical shippers, annually honors those companies which have successful prevention and corrective plans and a rate of zero NARs for shipments of regulated hazardous materials. Based on UPRR's car handling statistics, customers are divided into four categories (more than 3,000 cars, 1,000-3,000 cars, 999-500 cars and less than 500), and the awards are distributed accordingly.

2009 Award Winners

"Our customers play an important role in preventing non-accident releases of their products and the Pinnacle Award is one way we can recognize them for their efforts in transportation safety," said Diane Duren, vice president and general manager - chemicals.

The 40 winners were selected from numerous applications received from chemical customers and judged based on safe-loading techniques, securement of the shipments and no non-accident releases. Since 1994, non-accident releases of hazardous material have declined 57 percent on Union Pacific due in part to the increased inspections by the railroad's chemical transportation safety field personnel and the Pinnacle Award criteria.

Based on UP's carload-handling statistics, customers were placed in four categories:
Less than 500;   500 - 999;   1,000 - 3,000   and More than 3,000 cars.

The 2009 Union Pacific Railroad Pinnacle Award winners are: