(The following story by Robert McCabe appeared on The Virginian-Pilot website on August 30, 2009.)
NORFOLK Va. — If Norfolk Southern is any indication, the economy may be slowly starting to roll again.
Two execs at the Norfolk-based railroad told Dow Jones Newswires that nearly a third of the rail fleet that the company idled as the recession eroded business has been put back in service.
Over the past six weeks, about 9,500 of its 35,000 stored freight cars and 200 of its parked 700 locomotives have begun rolling again, they said. The railroad still has about a quarter of its rail-car fleet and 14 percent of its locomotive fleet in storage.
The executives – Chief Operating Officer Mark D. Manion and Chief Marketing Officer Donald W. Seale – expressed “cautious optimism” while stressing that “they don’t expect a rapid recovery for the broad economy,” according to the Dow Jones Newswires report.
In a July earnings presentation, Seale reported that the railroad’s second-quarter volume dropped 26 percent from the same quarter in 2008. So far in the third quarter, freight volume is down 19.5 percent from the same quarter last year, Seale told Dow Jones.
“We are bumping along the bottom… making some headway in some markets,” he said.