The packing chromatic number χ ρ ( G ) of a graph G is the smallest integer k such that there exists a k -vertex coloring of G in which any two vertices receiving color i are at distance at least i + 1 . It is proved that in the class of subcubic graphs the packing chromatic number is bigger than 13 , thus answering an open problem from Gastineau and Togni (2016). In addition, the packing chromatic number is investigated with respect to several local operations. In particular, if S e ( G ) is the graph obtained from a graph G by subdividing its edge e , then χ ρ ( G ) ∕ 2 + 1 ≤ χ ρ ( S e ( G ) ) ≤ χ ρ ( G ) + 1 .