Winning the BNSF way -- one day, week, month, quarter at a time
By SUSAN GREEN
Staff Writer
Whether they ship a single freight car or whole train loads, putting our customers first and stepping up to meet their high service expectations are foundational at BNSF. That’s why our focus in 2025 is to strengthen velocity and lower dwell, two areas that help customers grow with us as we succeed, while maintaining our unrelenting safety focus.
Executive Vice President & Chief Transportation Officer Matt Garland and his team are leading the charge on these and already finding the next level of reduced dwell and improved velocity. Thanks to their efforts, we’ve seen impressive first quarter results.
“At BNSF, we want to be the best transportation partner for our customers,” said Garland. “Thanks to our supply chain expertise and a team that shows up strong every day with a mindset for safety and service, along with a willingness to act on new ideas, adapt and continuously improve, we’ve demonstrated progress on our 2025 focus areas, with more to come.”
Here’s a look at how we’re making that progress.
BNSF’s merchandise trains, a combination of boxcars, tank cars, flatcars and more, are the workhorses of railroading, steady and sure. These trains are made up in larger terminals, where a customer’s rail cars come to us and are then sorted into trains bound for destinations across our network.
Like all our trains, we don’t like rail cars to sit – or dwell – in the terminals. Thanks to our team’s focus, we drove substantial reductions in terminal dwell, resulting in our all-time best first quarter performance—even with a weather-challenged February. Systemwide, dwell (the average amount of time a rail car spends in a terminal) was down by 17 percent or about five hours. At our hump yards, for the same period, dwell was down by several hours – the best quarter ever.
Merchandise trains were also faster outside the terminals, with train miles per day up about 20 percent for the same period. Combined, this means our merchandise (or carload) customers are seeing continued improvement, with on-time train performance up by more than 20 percent.
Like a team of horses, BNSF’s bulk trains – those that move the same commodity using the same car type, like hoppers – work together and are making great strides. Even with harsh winter conditions in the first quarter of 2025, our people and processes kept these trains on the move, proving their resiliency and delivering results.
For example, our export grain trains, which move in shuttle service with 110 hoppers and run between a loading origin and an unloading destination, saw a great March this year. We delivered a record number of grain shuttle trains for any month of March for export through the Pacific Northwest.
Coal, also moved in bulk, had a positive March, exceeding our forecast for the month. Again, winter hit hard along our coal routes, and we’re proud of how we responded to move this commodity needed for electricity generation, industrial use and export.
If trains were horses, intermodal would be a racehorse – faster than all the others. At BNSF, we’ve built the world’s fastest and largest intermodal network. That’s why we’re the leader in this mode and have a winning reputation – and the records to prove it.
For example, for the first quarter of 2025, our intermodal loadings increased compared with the same period in 2024. That includes a record first quarter for the automotive business (which is part of our intermodal service), with more automotive volume when comparing first quarters year over year.
Even with more volume, we improved transit time for our intermodal trains by an average of 2.5 hours. That translated into better overall on-time performance for this business, with a nearly 5-percent improvement over the first quarter of 2024.
Our processes, people and expertise give us a tremendous advantage. Add our commitment to our customers, and we’re the railroad to count on – to the finish line.
