The Union Pacific Railroad announced this week that it made some recordrevenues in the fiscal quarter just ended. Spokesman John Bromley says thefinancial report was mostly positive.He says they “broke a lot of records” which may be most remarkable becauseof the tough economic environment the past year or so, and though they hadone-time expenses, the core railroad operation’s doing well. Since holdingfiercely to the bottom line served the Union Pacific so well, Bromley saysU-P will do more of that.As part of that they’ll “adjust” the workforce, with some layoffs, someattrition, and technology changes that will mean 300 jobs, mainlyadministrative, in the first quarter. Bromley says that’s out of a totalnationwide workforce of 47-thousand. Union Pacific goes from Canada toMexico, and from Mississippi-river terminals like Chicago, Memphis and NewOrleans all the way to the west coast. There’s an aggressive cost-cutting campaign in the first quarter to tacklepredicted problems like instability in fuel prices. Bromley says the U-P isthe nation’s biggest railroad now, running trains from theChicago-Memphis-New Orleans midcontinent region all the way to the westcoast, and Canada to Mexico — in fact, Bromley says Union Pacific’s thelargest carrier into and out of the country of Mexico. You can bet UnionPacific carries its share of grain from Iowa farms.Particularly since1995, when Chicago & Northwestern merged with UnionPacific, it opened up northwestern Iowa grain markets to international tradevia trains headed to Pacific ports and the Gulf of Mexico.
