Matthew Rose was elected chairman of BNSF Railway on March 21, 2002. He was made President and Chief Executive Officer on December 7, 2000. In June of 1999, he was made President and Chief Operating Officer, responsible for all operations and marketing activities.
He had been senior vice president and chief operations officer since August 1997, and he was responsible for coordinating transportation, maintenance, quality, purchasing, labor relations and information services activities. From May 1996 to August 1997, Rose served as senior vice president, Merchandise Business Unit.
He joined Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) in 1993, and was named vice president, Vehicles and Machinery, in June 1994. In January 1995, he was named vice president, Southern Region Field Marketing, for the Merchandise Business Group. He was appointed vice president, Chemicals, following the merger of Burlington Northern Inc. and Santa Fe Pacific Corporation in September 1995.
Before joining BN, Rose was vice president, Transportation, for Triple Crown Services (a Norfolk Southern subsidiary) where he had functional responsibility for all facets of the truck/rail operation. Prior to that, he held various positions with Schneider National and International Utilities, a trucking conglomerate. He began his railroad career in 1981 as a corporate management trainee with Missouri Pacific Railroad and was appointed an assistant trainmaster.
While I cannot discuss the merits of the transaction, Berkshire Hathaway’s offer to purchase BNSF Railway is a solid endorsement of the railroad and the importance of our nation’s freight railroads to the global supply chain. As Warren Buffett stated, “Our country’s future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system.” And we can accomplish a lot of our national policy objectives by realizing the strengths of freight rail. Rail brings tremendous environmental and economic value to our society in terms of reducing highway congestion, fuel efficiency and reducing emissions. These efficiencies reduce supply chain costs, allowing… Read more
Even in the face of the current economic slow down, transportation experts continue to warn that our nation’s surface transportation system is at or near capacity across modes. If the supply chain is not expanded to meet growing freight demands, the result will be reduced mobility for passengers and freight and increasing logistics costs, jeopardizing U.S. global competitiveness and economic expansion. To minimize the emerging crisis, policy makers should examine freight movement from a national, multimodal perspective and adapt policies that strengthen and grow the entire supply chain, particularly along key freight corridors. This includes adopting polices that encourage both public and private investment in environmentally -… Read more
Virtually any mechanism for reducing carbon emissions (without allowing for the development of enabling technology) will have a severe impact on the U.S. economy and thus transportation as an industry. Beyond that, I am concerned that anyone would try to apply a cap and trade system to the transportation sector. It is virtually impossible to comprehend how such a system could be equitably applied to the many tens of millions of mobile sources in this Nation. If despite the cost we really want to consider reducing carbon emissions from transportation, then instead of cap and trade we need to seriously… Read more
In railroading circles, public private partnerships have a slightly different meaning than they do for highways. In railroading, the private sector owns the right of way and is responsible for its maintenance and expansion through the revenues derived from the marketplace. Thus, while the question on the highway side is to what extent the public sector should participate, the question is flipped around for railroads: what is the public's role in projects on private railroads? The bottom line, in my view, is that there is a place for public/private sector partnership in both the rail and highway systems wherein… Read more
We’ve made great strides in developing an intermodal transportation network, with more and more trucking companies taking advantage of rail for the long haul. But we still have a long way to go in developing a network that leverages the inherent advantages of each mode of transportation. We need to support public policy approaches that recognize those modal advantages and break down the walls between modes to achieve a truly integrated intermodal transportation system with funding that reflects that integration. The stimulus package has provided a start in that direction by giving states some flexibility in the use of… Read more
It's worth reviewing how many other countries, especially those in the European Union, are seeking to optimize transportation infrastructure spending across all modes. That integrated approach tends to focus public investment on those types of transportation infrastructure projects that have the greatest benefit to the public, whether that benefit comes from reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved overall transportation fuel efficiency, reduced highway congestion or all three. In the U.S., we have the advantage of starting with robust, market-based private investment in freight rail, which has produced a freight rail network that is the envy of the world. Thus, our… Read more
Congress has the opportunity to achieve a lot more than just stimulus in the stimulus bill. It can support economic development, “green” objectives like reduced transportation emissions and mitigating traffic congestion. However, if it gives little attention to rail – passenger and freight- it will undershoot all of those objectives. Railroads are, on average, three times more fuel efficient than trucks, and because greenhouse gas emissions are directly related to fuel consumption, every ton-mile of freight that moves intermodally- that is, by rail and truck - reduces greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds or more. Intermodal rail service represents the… Read more
While consumers may welcome the short-term relief, large fluctuations in fuel prices have been confounding America’s ability to make the right energy policy and use decisions for many years. The cruel irony of falling gasoline prices is that they may dilute efforts to increase efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. As we get back to a range where bottled water is more costly than gasoline, we risk losing the momentum needed to shift to more fuel efficient and alternatively fueled vehicles. The end result will be greater vulnerability to fuel supply constraints and increased risks of climate change. Congress should… Read more
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