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What is being written is only part of the story. About five years ago the leadership at BNSF decided to initiate a stock buy back of 120,000,000 of its stock shares at $25.00 per share; the total cash required for this undertaking was about $3,200,000.00. Why? BNSF seemed to be many, many years ahead of UP and all the others; in fact, UP was straining to its limits to absorb SP post-merger and having a hard time of it. UP had lost vitually all of its UPS business due to unsatisfactory performance. Common sense tells us that during the four years of the BNSF stock buyback, BNSF had to defer projects just about everywhere across the board to fund the stock buy back. Meanwhile for four years, UP continued to invest heavily in track, locomotives, and etc. For example, UP took a look at SP's very tired (not welded rail) Texas Pacific mainline that many predicted would have to be abandoned. UP decided to spend a ton of money and started to rebuild the El Paso, Texas to Ft. Worth, Texas Texas Pacific mainline; this line is now very busy with heavy intermodal traffic and played a key role in UP getting the UPS and other runs through Memphis, Tennessee with NS. Next, UP decided to spend another ton of money to bring the old Rock Island and SP mainline from Pratt, Kansas to El Paso, Texas up to UP mainline standards. This seemed to be an absolute folly to many folks, including me, but today this is a key part of the route being used by the UPS Bullet Trains. So, now, five years later, UP is in nearly first class physical condition and getting better every day and many years ahead of BNSF. Alas, BNSF may never catch back up in my opinion.
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