CEO PERSPECTIVE: Rail Must Evolve to Remain Relevant

Written by Katie Farmer, President and CEO, BNSF Railway

Katie Farmer, President and CEO, BNSF Railway

As part of a special series in Railway Age’s April 2023 issue, 13 chief executives of leading North American companies answer the single-most critical question: What is the biggest challenge facing the North American rail industry? Katie Farmer of BNSF is the first to share her perspective.

What all of us know with certainty is the important and essential role that railroads serve in supporting the economy and the American way of life. That was never more apparent than during the pandemic.

What often isn’t seen with such clarity is that change is and has been a constant in our industry over time. And that change has never been more evident than over the past few years. We have been confronted with tremendous change of a magnitude and frequency that none of us has experienced before.

The past three years exposed strains in the supply chain that we hadn’t experienced before—we saw points of vulnerability that had never been tested before. We are at a natural inflection point where we know that if we are going to remain competitive and remain relevant, we must evolve.

The good news is that we are in an industry that has been evolving since its inception almost 200 years ago. We know how to do this.

It starts with people. The most important asset of any railroad and the reason that any of us are successful is our people.

Any conversation on evolving with our people must start with safety. It is the bedrock of what we do. We remain committed to achieving our safety vision of a workplace free of accidents and injuries. And we know that vision is achievable with our people and continued innovation and improvement in technology.

What we also know after the past three years is that the future of work has changed. The workplace has fundamentally shifted and will continue to change.

If we are going to continue to attract the best and brightest to our industry, we need to find the solutions that meet the needs of our employees while providing consistent and reliable 24/7, 365 day a year service for our customers.

To remain relevant—we must be open to change—and equally committed to finding the answers.

At the end of the day, we want our company and our industry to not only be a great place to work but a great place to have a long career and deliver on our promise to our customers.

That promise to our customers also needs to evolve for our industry to remain competitive. To remain relevant.

We recognize at BNSF that to continue our long history of growth with and for our customers—we must continue to improve the experience for our customers by offering a better service product, more transparency, and increasing the ease of doing business. And we must work to adapt our product to the demands of the new supply chain.

We are fortunate to be in an industry with a long history of evolving our product and the value proposition it provides our customer.

There are many examples of this in BNSF’s history, such as our grain shuttle network, which changed the way producers move their grain to export markets. Crude by rail, which made what was essentially trapped oil economically viable thanks to rail’s flexibility and short ramp-up time. Perhaps the best example is the incredible growth of our intermodal network.

There are countless examples across the industry of that same theme. Seeing an unmet customer need and evolving the service product to seize the opportunity and grow the business.

We know where the industry needs to evolve and adapt as our employees, our customers, and the supply chain itself evolves. However, at BNSF, there is one thing we will never change. Our bias
for growth.

It is incredibly important during times of rapid change and disruption, for our customers as well as our employees, to see consistency in how we approach our business—who we are and who we will always be at BNSF.

What will never change is that BNSF is committed to having the capacity, the equipment and the people that allow us to say “yes” to new business opportunities.

I have never been more optimistic about BNSF or the industry. I know our best days are in front of us. The sustainability and the economy of rail are the perfect answer for the direction in which the supply chain is evolving. And I have no doubt we’ll be as essential and relevant in the future as we are today and have been for well over a century.