BNSF-CSX Partnership – How the Future Moves.

Collaboration and partnership have more to offer than the long and hard road of consolidation and merger.

Joe Hinrichs and his vision of partnership. Joe Hinrichs, CSX’s CEO, said that there are NO physical barriers preventing the railroads from achieving transcontinental shipping, and that the railroads, by working together, can ship goods across the country without a merger. “There’s nothing technically stopping us. It’s more desire and will and partnerships,” Joe said to Jacksonville Daily Record on September 11, 2025. Collaboration between railroads is about “growing the pie” for all railroads, and opportunity is there for all railroads. CSX’s network is “running as well as it ever has” and “is in fabulous shape.” Besides a fabulous running network, CSX is ahead of schedule with its hurricane-damaged tracks in Tennessee and its Baltimore tunnel renovations project, which saw its first train this past week.

Joe Hinrichs with Jim Cramer on the August 27th airing of the Mad Money show.

On August 22, 2025, BNSF and CSX announced new service products that will provide seamless, efficient, coast-to-coast intermodal services between Southern California and Charlotte, North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida. The new service will provide seamless freight service between Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia with the aim of converting OTR freight to rail. The third service is a new, direct international, intermodal service between Eastern ports in New York, New Jersey and Norfolk, and Kansas City. To support the growing markets in the southeast, two new 10,000 foot sidings will be constructed on BNSF’s Southern Transcon, giving increased flexibility, optionality and bringing integrated service to moving freight accross the U.S. (BNSF, CSX announce new intermodal services, offering seamless coast-to-coast rail solutions, Aug 22, 2025; CSX, BNSF Announce New Intermodal Services, Offering Seamless Coast-To-Coast Rail Solutions, Aug 22, 2025).

Now, the opinion of Wall Street types and investors is that “mergers” are the “new rail business environment” and that if Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are going to use mergers to achieve a transcontinental, and hence, seamless service, that should also include a CSX-BNSF merger. To Wall Street types, a merger is the only way forward for CSX and BNSF, the only way CSX and BNSF can compete with a seamless, transcontinental railroad. While Wall Street and Ancora Holdings were talking only of a merger, while partnership and collaboration were what Joe Hinrichs and CSX, Berkshire Hathaway, BNSF’s parent company, Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) and Canadian National had all had in mind.

The advantages of partnership over merger for CSX-BNSF. Partnership and collaboration do have advantages over a merger and consolidation. Railroad mergers are long and drawn-out affairs that can result in the merger falling through and being rejected. There are requirements of an application, a shareholders’ vote, Justice Department approval, STB hearings, along with objections of some parties, and granting conditions and demands. The merger of Chessie and Seaboard into CSX Corporation took about two years, from the time of CSX Corporation’s incorporation, November 14th, 1978, to the completion of the merger, October 31st – November 1, 1980. Vann Cunningham, the former AVP at BNSF Railway, believes that a CSX-BNSF merger “would be a long, slow, and complex undertaking from a legal perspective.”

According to Vann Cunningham, the former AVP at BNSF Railway, the alliance between CSX and BNSF offers an agile and innovative solution to a long and expensive merger. The benefits of a transcontinental, single line can be realized through a unified digital platform that would allow the alliance to provide a seamless customer experience, competing with a merged single railroad. Cunningham believes that a transcontinental network could be built through targeted trackage rights, shared intermodal facilities and a joint commercial platform. The BNSF-CSX alliance, based on collaboration and innovation, is of a hassle than a merger and can become a reality before the UP-NS merger. It can and will surprise Wall Street, and judging by the number of BNSF trains on the Garrett Line this past weekend, it’s already happening!