BNSF fingers empties as cause of volume drain

BNSF fingers empties as cause of volume drain BNSF Railway said its soft intermodal volumes this year appears to be due primarily to shippers not returning as many empty containers to the West Coast, Matt Rose, chairman and chief executive officer of parent company Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., said Tuesday.
   BNSF reported last month that it’s first quarter domestic intermodal volume was down 1.2 percent to 508,000 cars compared to the same period a year earlier, and that revenue stayed flat at $586 million.
   At the Bear Stearns investor conference in New York, Rose told a packed audience he suspects that a 30 percent increase in U.S. exports to Europe is one factor affecting the number of empties traveling on the BNSF network.
   Containers traditionally move loaded from the West Coast, where they are imported from Asia, to the interior of the country and are shipped back empty unless a return customer is found.
   “We think some of it is leaking out to Europe loaded and then coming back around the other side of the continent,” Rose said, alluding to containers circumnavigating the globe.
   BNSF gets revenue from empties by pricing loaded containers to cover the empty miles back.
   Another reason that domestic intermodal, compared to international intermodal, declined has to do with the trucking market, Rose said.
   Some motor carriers are trying to hold onto the drivers they worked so hard to recruit and train by moving intermodal-type freight using over-the-road drivers. Rose said lowering truck prices to win domestic backhaul jobs is not a sustainable business model.