Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF/UP 3rd quarter 2005 total carload comparison

Instead of comparing Revenue between BNSF and UP for this quarter (which in my opinion hides real trends via price increases), I've compared actual carloads hauled by each railroad for various commodity groups for the 3rd quarter. Nothing to earth shattering although the reverse trend in Automotive hauls is interesting to say the least.

AaronJ

Agricultural:
BNSF - up 8.1% to 227,000
UP - up 7% to 224,393

Automotive:
BNSF - up 10.8% to 41,000
UP - down 5% to 185,804

Chemical and Industrial
BNSF - down 2.0% to 399,000
UP - down 3% to 615,503

Energy/Coal:
BNSF - down 0.3% to 570,000
UP - down 3% to 545,887

Intermodal:
BNSF - up 7.4% to 1,281,000
UP - up 7% to 861,241

Other Carloads:
BNSF - up 8.3% to 52,000
UP - Doesn't list this category

TOTAL Carloads:
BNSF - up 4.2% to 2,570,000
UP - up 1% to 2,432,828

So why is UP the nations largest railroad ? Size does'nt always matter.

BNSF is getting alot more auto's out of the Ports becuase they have proven success with Intermodal and alot of Auto's are running on the Intermodal train's. Good work !

AaronJ,
The BNSF is hauling more new autos from the the auto plants in the south, Nissan in Smyrna TN amd Canton MS and Honda in Lincoln AL. BNSF is building auto trains in Memphis at Yale yard for the west and Chicago. They run Honda trains from San Diego to Lincoln AL. Honda and Nissan sales are holding up better then the Big 3 US car companies, I think. I just bought 2 new Nissans.

Good report,


gmojim

gmojim Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> AaronJ,
> The BNSF is hauling more new autos from the the
> auto plants in the south, Nissan in Smyrna TN amd
> Canton MS and Honda in Lincoln AL. BNSF is
> building auto trains in Memphis at Yale yard for
> the west and Chicago. They run Honda trains from
> San Diego to Lincoln AL. Honda and Nissan sales
> are holding up better then the Big 3 US car
> companies, I think. I just bought 2 new Nissans.
>
> Good report,
>
>
> gmojim

Interesting about the auto traffic out of the south! It's been rumored for a long time that the center of auto production would shift south, looks like it's happening.

I had one other thought that I forgot to mention earlier. When I look at the quarterly reports over the last 5 years, it's funny to see how in 2000-2002 time frame UP was the one with huge record quarterly reports while the BNSF was flat. We now know that UP got a little too happy with record profits/grabbing as much business as possible and forgot to invest in their system/employees which led to their falling backwards while BNSF surged. However, with reports like the following post...

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1024988,1025278#msg-1025278

...one has to wonder if the BNSF may have just made the same kind of mistake with the wheels just about to fly off the track soon, just like UP did two years ago? Time will tell, but it's not looking good as the old ATSF might need to be triple tracked before the end of this decade to avoid a serious service crisis.

AaronJ

There is also a new Hyundai plant open in Montgomery AL, and a Mercedes plant in Vance AL. A lot of auto production in the south.
The BNSF has had some problems lately, but most seems to be getting the intermodal handled in the terminals. If there is a derailment, the terminals are jammed with a big surge after track opens and they hold trains out of terminals.
Volume is also thru the roof in the freight business. Many customers are happy if you can find a piece of empty equipment to load their freight. The transit time is not as important.

gmojim