contrarian77

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    • Tue Mar 4th 14:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
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      Burlington Northern Santa Fe: Buffett Knows Best
      There is, indeed, a high barrier to entry in the railroad industry. But the author misses a key point: Another railroad plans to build into the Powder River Basin (which is not, by the way, in Colorado). Canadian Pacific, through its pending acquisition of the DM&E regional railroad, may build into the basin. This would provide additional competition for BNSF Railway (BNI) and Union Pacific, both of whom already haul coal out of the basin. The DM&E project has already cleared environmental hurdles and has the approval of the federal Surface Transportation Board.

      A second point the author misses is that BNI is more about intermodal than coal. BNI's moat is that it has the shortest, fastest and least-congested route from the ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach to Chicago, where this traffic either heads to Midwestern destinations or is handed off to Eastern railroads for destinations in the Northeast.
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