FORT WORTH, Texas -- Matt Rose, chairman, president and CEO of BNSF Railway, spoke about the railroad industry and the economy this morning as part of the Tandy Executive Speaker Series for the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University.
Rose, who was the youngest CEO of a major railroad when he took on that position at BNSF in 2000, discussed the past, present and future of the industry with O. Homer Erekson, John V. Roach Dean of the Neeley School of Business, who noted that Rose was known for his "meteoric rise through the ranks" and his leadership of one of the four largest railroad companies in the United States.
Railroads in the United States had their beginnings in the 1800s private companies lead by authoritative white men, Rose said, but today "railroading is very much a team sport" and BNSF tries to capture diverse employees who will hopefully spend their entire careers with the company.
While the economy is still very much impacting almost every industry, Rose said about 40 percent of railroad business is not consumer related. While the other 60 percent is reliant on people spending, railroads at least have a long history of having weathered many recessions and depressions, he said.
Rose commended President Barack Obama for communicating openly about the challenges that the country is facing economically. A president is much like a CEO of a company, he said, and having open and upfront conversations is as important as being a cheerleader.
"If you don't talk about it, people are going to assume the worst," he said.
The country also appears to be on the verge of a new era in which either the government will be more involved in economics or the market will revert back to a more purely capitalistic one, he said. There is technology in place for railroads to be a boon for the environment (one ton of freight can be transported 436 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel by train) and for the markets, he said, since the companies are focused on becoming as efficient as possible regardless of government regulations.
The outlook for railroads is very strong, Rose said and some of that relates to how rail can displace trucks on the roads and reduce carbon emissions as well as reduce traffic.
"You think about I-35 -- and some of you probably came here this morning on I-35 -- the real game changer in the amount of traffic on that road has been the amount of truck traffic. So if you think about public policy and think about what you could do if you could put fewer trucks on I-35, then the proposition for railroads has never looked better in history."
No matter how long it takes the economy to turn around, Rose said, there need to be some measures in place to ensure deficit spending doesn't spiral out of control again. The economy right now also offer opportunities for companies to take themselves further than they may have otherwise.
"When things are bad like this, that's when companies reinvent themselves," he said.
(The preceding article by Elizabeth Bassett was published February 25, 2009, by the Fort Worth Business Press.)
"There is technology in place for railroads to be a boon for the environment (one ton of freight can be transported 436 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel by train) and for the markets, he said, since the companies are focused on becoming as efficient as possible regardless of government regulations."
CSX claims "they" can move one ton of freight 423 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel on their TV ads lately. What does BNSF know that CSX doesn't know?
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If you are in a horror movie, you make bad decisions, its what you do.
I would guess that each Company is quoting an average from someone in thier Power Management team. How scientific a guess would have been made would depend on how much time the underling was given to come up with the answer, divided by weather or not the underling actually gave a fu** or not. Actually, I'm quite surprised that the figures are that close.
