Jerry Hall joined Patriot Rail in 2022 as Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Mr. Hall leads the day-to-day operations and safe and efficient movements of Patriot’s 31 regional and freight short-line railroads and oversees the company’s other transportation and service operations.
Prior to becoming COO at Patriot Rail, Mr. Hall served as Vice President Transportation for Norfolk Southern, where he managed the transportation network of over 19,000 route miles in 22 states. In this capacity, Mr. Hall achieved a record low operating ratio, reorganized the transportation leadership team, and consolidated the mechanical field operations into the transportation department to improve efficiency and better align responsibilities.
With a tenure of over 33 years with Norfolk Southern, Mr. Hall held several other senior leadership positions, including Vice President Mechanical, Vice President Network and Service Management, and Vice President Intermodal Operations. As VP Mechanical, Mr. Hall was responsible for maintaining more than 4,000 locomotives and a freight car fleet of over 54,000. He restructured reporting to a system shop philosophy to provide a more streamlined alignment of duties and to reduce redundancy. As VP Network and Service Management, Mr. Hall implemented state-of-the-art technologies to improve train dispatching, locomotive and freight car distribution, and employee scheduling. His duties as VP Intermodal Operations included managing the most extensive intermodal network in the east, with over 50 intermodal terminals and over 100 trains per day.
Under Mr. Hall’s leadership, Norfolk Southern achieved a then-record of intermodal lifts and record intermodal units per train while implementing advanced technologies to improve throughput in terminals. Mr. Hall managed the largest hump terminal, the two biggest divisions, and the busiest region on Norfolk Southern’s system. During his operations tenure at Norfolk Southern, Mr. Hall transformed a division with the system’s worst safety performance to the best in less than 18 months and also won the coveted “Chairman’s Award” for achieving a record safety performance for any Norfolk Southern transportation divisions.
Mr. Hall has served as a Board Member of the Belt Railway Company in Chicago, the Consolidated Rail Company in Philadelphia, PA, and the Pan Am Southern Railway in North Billerica, MA. Mr. Hall received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Alabama and graduated from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.