(The following article by Jan Falstad was published in the January 18 online issue of the Billings Gazette.)
BILLINGS, Mont. — The top executive at Montana Rail Link has announced he will retire at the end of the year.
Daniel Watts, chief executive officer and president, joined MRL in 1996 after decades with the former Burlington Northern Railroad and its predecessor, Northern Pacific Railroad.
Watts will be replaced by the current executive vice president Thomas Walsh. He started working for the company in 1987, two weeks before the first MRL train ran.
Walsh, an accountant with a degree from Carroll College, said the privately held corporation has seen its growth slow down in recent years. He said he’ll continue the emphasis on safety that Watts started and try to find new customers.
“Things like an ethanol plant or the Bull Mountain coal plant, all these things come out to potential clients that we’d like to work with,” Walsh said. “What we’d really like to see is more economic development for the state.”
MRL hauls mostly timber, talc and other natural resource products. Those industries have been stressed in recent years.
At a peak in 1998, MRL employed 1,100 workers, including seasonal workers. Slow growth meant the railroad had to lay off some workers running the 958 miles of track through Montana and into the panhandle of Idaho.
Today, MRL employs 900 workers, including seasonal employees. One-third of them work at the Laurel yard, which is the largest in the system.
The shutdown of the ASARCO smelter in East Helena, slowdown in mineral and timber extraction and production cutbacks at Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. near Missoula have hurt sales.
So has the drought in Eastern Montana.
“It’s quite different managing a company that isn’t growing and it has forced us to make cutbacks and it has changed how we do business,” Watts said, adding that he feels he successfully kept employees’ morale up and kept them energized during periods of cutbacks.
The outgoing chief executive said he’s proudest of the railroad’s safety record.
“In 1998, we won a national safety award and we’ve been near the top every year since then in terms of safety,” Watts said.
After his planned retirement, Watts expects to stay involved with the Washington Transportation Group of Missoula.
Missoula-based businessman Dennis R. Washington owns the Washington companies, which are involved in rail and marine transportation, mining and construction.
Watts compared the MRL crews favorably to any he’s worked with in during 40 years in the railroad business.
“There aren’t any better railroaders in the country than MRL,” Watts said.