By John Kingston, Freight Waves; January 22, 2019
Three sides of the move to precision railroading (PSR) were on display last week during earnings season conference calls, and they helped to drive home how deeply the practice is embedding itself in the nation’s railroads.
Within 48 hours, the industry could listen in on an earnings call from CSX (NYSE: CSX), the railroad whose admirable operating ratio (OR) has helped set off the adoption of PSR among other companies; an earnings call from Kansas City Southern (NYSE: KCS), which said on Friday it was going to adopt the “principles” of PSR; and the earnings call of J.B. Hunt (NYSE: JBHT), which ironically is most identified with the single Class 1 railroad between Canada and the U.S. –BNSF, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) –that has not adopted PSR but which puts enough intermodal service on the other railroads to have the perspective of a shipper needing to do its own adoption to the new reality on the rails.