BNSF Warns Montanans About Proposed UP-NS Railroad Merger

Montana's Attorney General has raised concerns about the proposed railroad merger. Both of Montana's US Senators have raised concerns. And now BNSF Railway is speaking out here in Montana as well.

"Feds reject railroad mega merger that threatened Wyoming coal." That was a headline and a great write up by Cowboy State Daily recently. But it's not just coal that could be threatened by a proposed merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads- Montana agriculture is speaking out against this proposed merger as well.

Zak Anderson, Chief of Staff and the Vice President of Communications for BNSF Railway joined us recently on our Montana Talks statewide radio show.

BNSF Railway is also coming out swinging against this proposed railroad merger, and they came out swinging last summer when it was first announced. 

Zak Anderson: "From our perspective, customers should be asking the questions of, why this is necessary. It seems on the surface of it to be pretty costly. It's an $85 billion transaction. It'ss huge, anti competitive. It's going to reduce options for shippers, be they ag, coal, intermodal, overall, it's going to raise prices on things, which is bad for the US economy and ultimately, for the American consumer.

Zak tells us that Union Pacific has a small footprint in Southwest Montana. However, he says the merger could greatly impact customers here in the state. 

Zak Anderson: "You're going to lose options...if there's an agricultural customer selling grain to a facility in the East right now, BNSF takes that grain and interchanges it with NS somewhere- Chicago, somewhere along the Mississippi River. And so you think, well okay, if that merger goes through, that could continue. You're right, it could. But today, Norfolk Southern is incentivized to take that grain. They want the business. If this merger goes through, UP is probably going to want to source that grain from somewhere they serve, say- Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, not Montana. And so the price is going to go up for us to interchange with UP, because they're going to want to advantage the locations they serve. But to be honest, even the locations they serve haven't been that excited about this merger, because UP has a long history of raising rates on customers that don't have any other choice but UP."

Here's the full audio of our conversation.