A&M Railroad Customer Service

Each customer is an individual with unique requirements. Arkansas and Missouri Railroad has approximately 150 customers. Understanding how they work, what they produce, their facilities, their priority commodities, and how rail movement affects their production insures quality customer service.

Arkansas and Missouri Railroad has recently upgraded its computer system. We currently have twenty-two network users; however, with this upgrade, we now have the capability to have seventy users. The existing IRCS software was recently upgraded by RMI. We can currently run EDI, Car Hire, and Train II.

One stand alone computer station is for our scale reader that Arkansas and Missouri Railroad has set up. We also have AEI readers in Monett, MO, Springdale and Van Buren, AR that links up to our system in Springdale, Arkansas. There is a disaster recovery plan in place in case of a severe system crash due to unforeseen forces. We feel the changes that have been made have put Arkansas and Missouri Railroad ahead of most short lines and will enable us to grow for years to come.

We have established a weekly car order program for ten sand customers, six refrigeration customers and two reload facilities. All the customers project their needs for the week (empty boxes, flats, reefers, and hoppers, loads of sand) and when they would like to have the cars. Continual communication with Arkansas and Missouri Railroad allows our customers to increase their business and project the cars they will need for the week.

This reduces problems with the movement of railcars and allows the customer to anticipate the direction rail movement will take. This, in turn, also allows our customers to have more information about their shipments and they are able to pass this news on to their customers.

Faster and better service is the primary goal for the Arkansas and Missouri Railroad. Any time a car is released as an empty or spotted as a load, our customers now utilize the online tools in Shipper Connect through Railcar Management, Inc. All loads must have the billing attached to be released from the customer, which reduces problems with demurrage.

The Arkansas and Missouri Railroad's Agency department is open continuously from 10:00pm, Sunday, to 11:00pm, Friday. We are also open Saturday from 7:00am to 12:00pm. Customers are encouraged to call or come by with any questions, problems or just to stop by to learn more about the railroad.

Finally, we have also been able to improve many of our services by sending out opinion polls yearly to our customers so that they can respond to our service, quality and communication techniques.