From Railway Age - April 29, 2008

BNSF Chairman, President, and CEO Matthew K. Rose says the railroad achieved "record first-quarter results, while demonstrating continued improvement in our velocity and service metrics."  BNSF first-quarter net income of $455 million, or $1.90 a share, was 30% higher than in last year's quarter and exceeded analysts' estimates of $1.23 EPS.

BNSF's results also demonstrated the importance of recovering a major portion of increased fuel costs through fuel surcharges.  BNSF paid $1.009 billion for diesel fuel in the first quarter, exceeding the $983 million that it paid employees in compensation and benefits.  The fuel bill was $357 million higher than in the 2007 quarter.  The increase in fuel surcharges was $280 million.

BNSF's first-quarter freight revenue increased $599 million, or 17%, to $4.14 billion.  Agriculture volume growth contributed to the increase as well as the fuel surcharge.

"Looking forward, we continue to be optomistic about the long-term prospects for BNSF and are poised to meet increased demand as the economy strengthens," said Rose.

In midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, BNSF stock was at a new 52-week high of $102.50.

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Comments by David Joynt General Chairman, BMWED

What this article does not tell you is that the BNSF report to Wallstreet included the fact there are over 800 less employees on BNSF in 2008 than there were in 2007.  In addition, the productivity of those employees rose 6.8% during the first quarter of 2008.

While the BNSF can get away with charging a fuel surcharge to their customers, they continue to refuse to pay their MOW employees additional expenses to offset the skyrocketing cost of the fuel they must purchase everyday in order to travel the long distances just to work and then contibute to the increased production of the BNSF employees.