Executive Committee:
President & Chair: Mike Partica, CN
1st Vice President: Garry Neumann, Minnesota, Dakota & Western
2nd Vice President: Armando Torres, TFM
Secretary: Gary Snyder, Greenbrier Management Services
Treasurer: Lee Hirsch, CN
Past President: J.D. Pavek, The Greenbrier Companies
Constitution and By-Laws Committee Chair: Jim Jamieson, Jamieson Consulting
Finance Committee Chair: Mike Lombard, XTRA
Agenda Committee Chair: Fran Outersky, Transportation Management Logistics
Site Selection Committee Chair: Sherry Williams, Relam, XinSight
Web Committee Chair: Ged Seiflow, TTX

March 19, 2004

Subject: Call to ACACSO Spring Meeting; May 19, 20 and 21, 2004 – Pittsburgh,                 Pennsylvania Web Version  

Dear Member or Industry Contact:

ACACSO’s Annual Spring Meeting will be held May 19th, 20th and 21st at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh, PA. As usual, this meeting will be packed with informative presentations. However, one of the best reasons for attending these meetings is to meet and have informal discussions with your peers from the industry. Problems are many times easier to solve when you know the right person to call. To foster the building of professional relationships and a sense of common cause, the association’s customary Wednesday evening reception is a dinner boat cruise on the Three Rivers of Pittsburgh. In addition, we encourage everyone to participate in a fun evening at PNC park Tuesday night to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates take on the San Diego Padres. The cost of the game ticket includes boat fare from the hotel to the stadium.

From the enclosed preliminary agenda, you can see the meeting will cover many important and timely topics. Wednesday morning will start with a training workshop covering everything you wanted to know about tariffs including everybody’s favorite… the demurrage tariff.

If your responsibilities include areas of car hire or car service, you need to be at this meeting. See the whole picture when we take a multi-disciplinary view of how the car hire and car service rules impact each other. Learn more about data quality reporting, heavy-duty flat car reporting, mileage equalization, reclaims and counter reclaims. There will be presentations covering OT-28 road reporting, market rate determinations and their impact on car hire, plus industry updates from various committees which have an impact on car hire and car service rules and processing.

Meeting registration fees are only $60 for pre-registered members (more for non-members and late registration) – this may be the best value for any rail industry event. Please see the Association’s web site, www.acacso.org, under the “Meetings” tab for information on the hotel and how to make reservations. The site will also have the most current version of the agenda.

The entire ACACSO Executive Committee is excited about this meeting and we look forward to seeing you at Station Square. Please do not delay, make your hotel reservations today - our block of rooms will only be held through April 27th .

Sincerely,

Mike Partica
President