OMAHA, Neb. — BNSF Railway’s second-quarter earnings slumped 24% as volume and average revenue per car both declined, the railroad’s corporate parent, Berkshire Hathaway, said on Saturday.
BNSF’s operating income fell 24%, to $1.6 billion, as revenue declined 11.6%, to $5.7 billion. The railway’s operating ratio increased five points, to 68.2%.
Overall volume was down 11.1% for the quarter, with all four of the railroad’s business segments reporting declines.
Consumer products volume — which includes intermodal and automotive — declined 16.1%, partly due to the impact of the loss of the Schneider intermodal contract to Union Pacific. “The volume decreases were primarily due to lower intermodal shipments resulting from lower west coast imports, the loss of an intermodal customer and competition from lower spot rates in the trucking market which has impacted our domestic intermodal demand. These decreases were partially offset by an increase in automotive volume from higher vehicle production,” Berkshire said.
Industrial products volume declined 3.3%. “The volume declines were primarily due to lower demand for chemicals, plastics and lumber, as well as lower shipments of petroleum products resulting from refinery outages,” Berkshire reported.
Agricultural products shipments declined 8.3% due to lower grain exports.
Coal volume was down by 3.5% for the quarter due to “moderating demand attributable to lower natural gas prices and weather-related impacts,” Berkshire said.
The traffic losses the RR’s have experienced are of their own doing they practically give the business away to the truckers with their poor svc, poor customer svc, almost daily derailments, cutting their workforce to the point they can’t move the freight they have all for the almighty operating ratio, this is why RR’s have a bad image in the shipping industry Stand on an overpass of a major interstate count how many trucks you see in an hour, then go wait by a major rail corridor see how long it takes to even see one train pass by. I am actually surprised the RR freight industry is still in existence.
Mr., Riley you seem to conveniently ignore the continued negative impacts of labor unrest at all west coast ports including those in British Columbia. I think the Longshoreman Workers Union is more to blame here than anyone else.
Also, in case your forgot about it the BNSF main line between Chicago and L.A. is now totally doubletracked with the exception of about 4 miles of bridge crossings. This is now one of the longest double track rail main lines in the world.
What does Biden have to do with traffic being off? Check what’s going on in long-distance trucking as well; Yellow, for example. And in fact the OVERALL economy is going great!
Parts of the economy (hiring) are doing well, other parts (commercial real estate, manufacturing) are not doing well and the financial system is under a lot of stress from the rapid change from the insane zero interest rates to 5 % plus. Bankruptcies are rising rapidly. The future from now is really a mystery.
But Joe says the economy is doing great. 😜
“Amtrak Joe” (or is it “Scranton Joe”) is clueless on economics ….