MULVANE, Kan. – The chief executive of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. wasn’t happy when he found out during a visit here last month that a stretch of new railroad tracks being installed to help ease freight congestion might not start carrying trains until September, according to Daniel Machalaba of the Wall Street Journal.
“August,” Matthew Rose snapped back, in a message to employees of the second-largest U.S. railroad by revenue to speed up work on the eight-mile-long project to meet their boss’s deadline.
The push shows how much BNSF and other major U.S. railroads have riding on improving notorious bottlenecks in their networks in time for the next peak shipping season, which begins this month and builds through the summer and fall in an effort to stock shelves before the holiday shopping season.
Still, some customers worry that current expansion projects still won’t be enough to ensure timely deliveries.
Cargo shipments from Asia to the U.S. have been growing by about 10% a year, and much of the freight that arrives by ship and is headed for the Midwest or East Coast is transferred to trains for the final leg of its journey.
Meanwhile, a lack of drivers is causing some trucking carriers to shift shipments to trains, and demand is surging for coal that moves by rail to electric utilities.
Trains now carry 41% of U.S. freight as measured in ton-miles, or one ton moved one mile, up from 35% in 1986, according to the Association of American Railroads, a trade group.
While few experts are predicting a repeat of the meltdown in 2004, when a dockworker shortage and problems at Union Pacific Corp. caused dozens of container ships to back up at ports in Southern California, major railroad customers are expecting another nail-biting peak season.
Some rail users predict that railroads are likely to fall even further behind the surging freight volumes.
“Everybody is bracing for congestion,” s