2023: Abel explains BNSF's focus
GREG ABEL: Moving to BNSF, I’ll start again by expressing great pride in the BNSF team. We have an exceptional group led by [CEO] Katie [Farmer] and her managers that show up every day to do great work on the railroad. At the same time, they would be the first to acknowledge there’s more to be done there.
The specific reference to precision scheduled railroading, the other large Class A railroads in the U.S. follow that, and including the two in Canada. We’re well aware what they’re doing, and obviously pay close attention to their operating metrics.
And our team strives every day to be more efficient, obviously. I would say we balance it with the needs of our customers. If I look back to pre-2022, so we look at the three-year period of 2019, 2020, 2021, the BNSF team made significant progress on their efficiencies, and delivering overall value back to the shareholders and to their customers.
And at the same time, maintaining a very safe railroad for our employees. So, we’re making excellent progress. That didn’t stop last year. They made great progress.
Again, the reality in 2022 is we did go through a period of time where we had to call it, “Reset the Railroad.”
We came out of the pandemic, there were the supply challenges. We had certain other labor issues and other things going on at the port.
And the reality is, our team prioritized getting the railroad back in place for the long-term, not a short-term focus on hitting certain operating metrics in 2022. We’re well aware of where we were relative to those metrics.
But the real focus was to get the railroad reset in a safe manner so it could deliver long-term value and long-term service to our customers. And that’s really what we’ll continue to see with that team.
There’ll be continual progress. There’ll be years where it’s not as quick, or even we go backwards. But over the long-term, we’ll see exceptional results from that team, and couldn’t be more proud that we have that asset. Thank you. (Applause)
WARREN BUFFETT: I would just — well, he deserves — but both of them deserve applause.