The good times for railroads have finally arrived, Norfolk Southern Corp. Chief Executive Wick Moorman said Tuesday. Declaring that the industry is in the midst of a "rail renaissance," Moorman said a number of factors in the past few years has brought a surge of business and record profits to the industry. Those include high fuel prices, congested highways, a severe shortage of truckers and strong demands for coal and imported goods. Those trends are unlikely to fade soon, he said. "We are going to be essential for this nation's economy in a way really that we haven't been in recent times," Moorman said, speaking at The Founders Inn and Spa as part of Regent University's Executive Leadership Series. After spending much of the past century struggling to survive, railroads now have so much cargo to move that they're straining to haul it all, he told the crowd of about 165.
By about 2000, railroads had "right-sized" themselves for what they had forecast to be slow, steady growth in the future by shedding tracks, locomotives and employees, he said. The recent demand for rail transportation caught the industry by surprise. "All that excess capacity that we thought we didn't need," Moorman said, "well, we wish we had a little of it back these days." Moorman, also chairman and president of the Norfolk-based railroad, the nation's fourth largest, warned against a "very active" effort to bring back strict federal regulations for the railroad industry, which was deregulated in 1980. That gave railroads much more freedom to set pricing and offer services such as hauling truck trailers and shipping containers, setting the stage for the industry's present success. "The quickest way I know... to send us back to the Dark Ages is to re-regulate the rail industry," he said. While he predicted those efforts won't succeed, he conceded that the industry brought them on itself. "The combination of poor service and rising prices tends to lead to customer discontent," Moorman said. "We're seeing that in Washington in a big way."