COVID-19 has affected every sector of our business, including our people, operations, and customers, and we’ve had to adapt accordingly by taking all necessary steps to protect our employees and the communities in which we operate as well as customer supply chains, vendors, and partners. This is not the first time in history that CN’s resilience has been tested. In response to the unprecedented challenges associated with the coronavirus, we were able to continue running a solid operation to safely serve our customers, keeping the economy and cross-border trade moving, by deploying our multi-phase Pandemic Plan in early March. Our employees bravely kept physically coming to work and demonstrated yet again how essential they are to the economy.
Both in the field and at home, we’ve adapted our way of working and doing business. Disinfection regimens were enhanced and amplified, travel was restricted, and employees not required on-site were strongly encouraged to work from home. At this time, we continue to operate very efficiently, and our network is extremely fluid.
From where we stand, we can see that the economic recovery is underway. Q3 was a quarter of sequential recovery starting in July. We have been able to bring back many of our employees to active service, and we have added train starts and frequency of local first-mile services.
Despite the pandemic, we are pursuing our long-term strategy and continuing to deploy technology as the next driver of value to CN and our strong pipeline of CN-specific growth opportunities. We also made some permanent changes and adjustments during the pandemic, and we will continue to be on the lookout for cost savings opportunities.
The future looks good, and we are focused on delivering long-term sustainable profitable growth. We have been able to generate solid free cash flow, which has allowed us to weather the storm, and we continue to manage our business efficiently while being sensitive to any new opportunities. We are obviously keeping a close watch on how the current wave of cases goes, but we are ready for 2021 and we are ready to keep moving the economy.