CSX investors might want to be singing along with The Yardbirds today. Train kept-a-rollin' all night long! The railroad owner reported first-quarter sales and earnings after the closing bell Tuesday that beat forecasts.
The strawberries on your cereal. Your laptop, cell phone, and TV. The coal that's burned to power them. The car you drive. The roof over your head. We may work in a knowledge economy, but Madonna had it right: We live in a material world.
At a time when local officials coast to coast are frantically slashing municipal budgets, furloughing employees, and trying to soothe recession-wounded constituents, Curtis Calder, the city manager in Elko, Nev., has a hard time coming up with much to worry about.
Trains and text messages made a deadly combination when two locomotives collided head-on last year near Los Angeles, California, witnesses told an investigative panel this week.
updated: Thu Mar 05 2009 14:05:00
A report says a train operator may have let friends operate his train before a deadly crash. CNN's Ted Rowlands reports.
Many skiers who visit Colorado prefer the slopes of Aspen, Vail or Breckenridge. But there's a cool little day trip from Denver that often gets overlooked by out-of-towners.
A Metrolink engineer driving a commuter train sent a text message about 22 seconds before the train collided with a Union Pacific freight train last month, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a Metrolink train that slammed head-on into a freight train Friday did not apply its brakes, according to preliminary data from the investigation.
Emergency crews found more victims early Saturday, boosting the death toll to 18, as they delicately picked apart the mangled wreckage of a commuter train that collided head-on with a freight train on the same track
High energy prices have started to put a dent in corporate profits. But surprisingly, one industry that relies heavily on oil has not been hurt: the railroads. Most of the nation's top railroad companies have chugged along with strong sales and earnings increases in 2008, their results stoked by rising demand for transporting food and coal.
Stocks looked set Friday to extend the previous session's advance as oil prices fell further and the dollar rallied.
The deluge of quarterly financial reports continue this week. What have we learned so far?
FedEx issued a nasty surprise to Wall Street this morning.
Want to invest in a green industry that employs the latest technology, reduces U.S. oil consumption and is priced very attractively? Look no further than the railroads. Laggards for decades after the 19th-century boom ended, they're hot again.
The stock market is in turmoil. Fears of a recession are rising. And experts question whether the Federal Reserve's big interest-rate cuts are enough to save the economy. Does that mean you need to be doing a dozen things right now to protect your investments?
Canadian Pacific Railway agreed to buy Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corporation for at least $1.5 billion in cash, the companies announced late Tuesday.
Stocks gained Tuesday morning as investors welcomed news of big investments from Berkshire Hathaway and others. However, any advance was limited by a mixed housing report and continued reluctance after the recent run.
Wall Street was encouraged Wednesday by bullish buys from major investors like Warren Buffett and George Soros as well as news from the housing sector.
WHEN YOU'RE SAVING FOR RETIREMENT, YOU FACE A timeline measured not in years, but in decades. How do you find investments that can go the distance, so that you don't have to keep worrying about you...
When you're saving for retirement, you face a timeline measured not in years, but in decades. How do you find investments that can go the distance, so that you don't have to keep worrying about your portfolio and making constant adjustments to your holdings, a practice that, study after study shows, lowers your returns?
High oil prices have been dragging down stocks. And share prices got another kick in the head Monday, when BP announced it would be shutting down the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska.
Overgrown hedges
Union Pacific ranks no. 164 on this year's list of the FORTUNE 500, with $13,578 million in revenues, up 11.2% from the previous year. The Omaha, Neb.-based company was ranked no. 174 on the 2005 list. Its 2005 profits were $1,026 million, up 69.9% from a year earlier.
Deaf beauty contest winner Tara McAvoy was walking along the railroad tracks from her Austin, Texas, home to her mother's workplace, text-messaging family and friends, when a train struck her and killed her, according to the Austin Police Department.
Hurricane Katrina will cost the nation 400,000 jobs by the end of the year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. To put that in perspective, employment in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast totaled about 775,000 at the end of 2004.
Pitney Bowes provides walking paths and Aetna helps pay for weight-management classes. But companies overlook an easy way to help workers be healthier: time off.
MARKET PERFORMANCE
For more than a year, stock prices have failed to make much headway despite above-average economic growth, falling unemployment and rising personal incomes. Most forecasters have regarded the marke...
For more than a year, stock prices have failed to make much headway despite above-average economic growth, falling unemployment and rising personal incomes. Most forecasters have regarded the market's sideways drift as a chance for stocks to catch a breath before a second phase of the bull market begins.
The Sivy 70 is a list of key companies suitable for conservative long-term growth investors. I review the list periodically to make sure that the stocks' long-term prospects still meet the criteria for inclusion.
A suicidal man will face murder charges after parking his vehicle on railroad tracks Wednesday, causing a commuter train collision that killed at least 11 people outside Los Angeles, officials said.
A few years ago, that neighborhood was definitely on the wrong side of the tracks.
Pessimism is rampant. Despite a string of good statistics--on growth, productivity, housing and unemployment--an increasing number of investors think the economy is falling apart and the bull marke...
Pessimism is rampant. Despite a string of good statistics -- on growth, productivity, housing and unemployment -- an increasing number of investors think the economy is falling apart and the bull market is just about over.
A Union Pacific freight train struck and killed at least two people walking across a bridge in southern Washington state Monday afternoon, a train official said.
The economy has averaged nearly 5 percent real growth over the past four quarters.
The bull market celebrated its first birthday on March 11, and that anniversary should be cause for widespread happiness. But for many investors, a tinge of anxiety has undercut both their enthusia...
The bull market celebrated its first birthday on March 11, and that anniversary should be cause for widespread happiness.
Everyone pays lip service to the importance of diversification, but few investors really understand how to get the full benefit of mixing different types of assets. In fact, it's well worth reviewing the theory behind diversification because it's the one free lunch in investing.
I generally try to avoid recommending a stock right before the company reports earnings. It's just too easy to be embarrassed by some negative surprise.
Union Pacific Railroad has long known that many of its 48,000 employees--mostly middle-aged men--are overweight. That can be a dangerous problem for people who ply the rails. So 16 years ago the Om...
When one of the nation's oldest trucking companies declares bankruptcy just as the biggest railroad announces record quarterly earnings, tabloid headlines like STALLED TRUCK CRUSHED BY SPEEDING LOC...
Back when the economy was perking along, the term "supply chain" was usually accompanied by a reference to some computer program touted as the way to "automate all aspects of global logistics." Far...
It was the year the Internet bubble burst, the Nasdaq tumbled, and the economy slowed. But guess what? The revenues of America's 500 biggest corporations kept on growing in 2000. In FORTUNE's annua...
The most important trend in the stock market today is what analysts call divergence. The best-performing stocks keep moving higher, while shares that have long been lagging fall further and further...
Peer idly out the window of a moving train, and you might catch a glimpse of small warning signs posted along the track. Fiber-optic cables, owned perhaps by AT&T, MCI, Sprint, or Qwest, are buried...
There's an episode of Seinfeld in which Elaine--during her days as the brassy CEO of J. Peterman--can't manage to fire an incompetent mail clerk. Why? The clerk, a former soldier who sports militar...
Have you been receiving these checks in the mail? Not ones made out to you; ones you write. They've got your name and address printed in the corner, just like your regular bank checks--except you d...
Trucking is one of those industries both wonderfully grand and stupefyingly tedious at the same time. The wonderful part: Massive, dazzling, chrome-plated trucks pushed down the highway by burly gu...
The wave of mergers sweeping Wall Street today is fundamentally different from the mania of the 1980s. And the potential payoffs are far greater. But to cash in on the boom, individual investors wi...
Since 8:30 in the morning, two 3,000 horsepower locomotives pulling 65 freight cars have been barreling west from Beaumont, Texas, through Houston on their way to Mexico. I'm on the train, riding c...
When stock valuations head into uncharted waters, as they did in 1997, smart investors often start trawling for companies whose share prices have sunk recently because of temporary business setback...
The job of IRS commissioner, once a plum, is now a lemon. The outgoing collector-in-chief, Margaret Richardson, announced her resignation in January after the Treasury made clear it wanted a top co...
Given today's high-flying market, you might think there were no stocks left that could climb another 30% on top of the almost unbelievable 70% advance of the past two years. Testifying before the S...
We first warned readers more than a year ago that stocks were flying too high. Since then, we've advised you to follow a defensive strategy to guard against a possible 15% to 20% plunge in share pr...
"An amazing day. Amazing. I don't know how it happened. He had played so great. It was the strangest turn of events I've ever seen. I feel so sad for him." So said Nick Faldo about Greg Norman, whi...
CORPORATIONS IN THE U.S. ARE caught up in the biggest frenzy of mergers and spin-offs since the late 1980s. The value of mergers announced in 1995 alone figures to top $325 billion, far above the p...
Deep in the Louisiana bayou, a team of leathery pipeline workers--of all people--celebrate the rigors of healthy living. A few years ago the 14 men who operate a 22-acre natural gas platform in the...
Considering that the stuff has been around for at least 6,000 years, and that historians think it may have been invented even before bread, and that 70% of the adult American population uses it, an...
How does your company recruit technical workers? Still hanging that tacky job openings sign by the plant gate? Or maybe you're running cryptic classifieds. Are you happy with the results? As techni...
Chances are pretty good that Beth Malloy will play a major role in making a scientific discovery that may one day save your life. A laboratory technician on the cardiovascular research team at Gene...
CALL IT THE YEAR of the outsider. In boardrooms from coast to coast, directors of troubled corporations have been snapping up CEOs from other companies as if they were multimillion-dollar, free-age...
How to make executives behave in the best interest of shareholders? For years companies did it by subtly encouraging the brass to buy stock in their employer -- often by making shares available at ...
You might say that the FORTUNE Service 500 had an okay year in 1992, with profits up 9%, to $73 billion. But put those numbers in context, and they suddenly look a lot better. The gain was the seco...
Bush Administration honchos -- particularly women -- are high on the list of those corporations looking to fill board seats. No small irony that, given the ex-President's popularity among female vo...
FOR 50 unblemished years, Mike Walsh -- Stanford running back, White House Fellow, Yale Law grad, and now transformational CEO of a once teetering industrial giant -- has lived the American dream, ...
One day soon you may have to work radical change in an organization -- but how? Four CEOs who have turned companies upside down recently told what they've learned at the FORTUNE 500 Forum in San An...
UNTIL four months ago, David Donaldson sold boilers for Asea Brown Boveri, a $29-billion-a-year Swiss-based industrial equipment manufacturer with rapidly expanding operations in the U.S. After 30 ...
EXECUTIVE LIFE/COVER STORIES 70 MORALE CRISIS The people who used to be the brass's most reliable backers -- middle managers and other white-collar workers -- now feel disenfranchised and cynical. ...
HOW DOES IT feel to be an outsider taking control of a huge, strange organization? Just ask Michael Walsh. Since abandoning law for business 11 years ago, Walsh, 49, has been traveling faster than ...
Mike Walsh, 49, likes Omaha, home of the Union Pacific Railroad, which he recently left as CEO. Walsh, who listens to rock music in his office, gets much of the credit for Union Pacific's turnaroun...
Call it a mid-season slump. After starting the year red-hot, stocks cooled off during the second quarter and headed into the summer almost exactly where they closed in late March -- lots of churnin...
FROM THE BLACK coal trains sliding like pythons through the Appalachian foothills to double-stack convoys speeding just-in-time cargoes from Chicago to Los Angeles, America's railroads are bound fo...
-- In the ''information richness'' studies that Vanderbilt professor Richard Daft conducts, employees invariably say that face-to-face communication with management and fellow employees is preferab...
WITHOUT A SCRIPT or any rehearsal, Mike Walsh, CEO of Union Pacific Railroad, holds the stage for 5 1/2 hours as employees from 24 sites across the country fire questions at him via satellite. With...
Save for the big automakers, Warren Young may be the nation's leading car salesman. But you won't see him on TV hosting tacky ad spots with balloons and marching music. Young, 63, a former mechanic...
Several books turn up on more than one CEO's night stand, including two best- sellers: Scott Turow's novel The Burden of Proof and the memoir, Father, Son & Co., co-authored by former IBM CEO Thoma...
THE UNION PACIFIC Railroad, the granddaddy of the American industry, the co- driver of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah, was run for a century with all the rigor of a model-train set. Blessed w...
THE ECONOMY/Cover Story 52 HOW AMERICA CAN TRIUMPH The U.S. enters the 1990s bristling with opportunity. A world of increasingly shared power still needs leadership, and America remains the logical...
Streamlined from downsizing and well oiled with earnings, railroads steamed into 1989. But investors should think twice before getting on board. While several newly restructured lines look promisin...
THE BARBARIAN HORDES were descending on Rome, mayhem in their loathsome souls. There was only one man to take charge of the republic in its hour of need, and the call went out to a humble farmer na...
George Roche, 47, is not a native of Baltimore, but he has begun to feel at home after living there for 20 years. He sails Chesapeake Bay and cheers on the Orioles. As portfolio manager of T. Rowe ...
Just six months ago Charles Clough (rhymes with how) came aboard as chief investment strategist for Merrill Lynch, where he counsels over 11,000 retail brokers and 440 institutional brokers at the ...
In the past 12 months, as most of the rest of the market has cannonballed forward, railroad stocks have chugged ahead only 3%. Now, security analysts say, they are poised to really move. If the eco...
This Oklahoma pork packer went belly up in 1983, filing for bankruptcy less than two years after LTV spun it off to shareholders. Wilson had wasted away by selling low-margin commodities -- hams fr...
IT WAS the highlight of my life,'' says Harwood Cochrane. To get that kind of rating from a 74-year-old multimillionaire, it would have to be a big deal -- and it was. In October the plain-spoken C...
GENTLEMAN FARMER and businessman Drew Lewis has few peers when it comes to shoveling out a barn and emerging clean. In 1986 he did it twice -- in the figurative sense -- finishing a triumphant stin...
Harry Zisson, 47, doesn't look for a terribly exciting economy over the next 12 months. The dollar's depreciation will help exporters, he says, and the tax bill should stimulate the economy somewha...
In an age when computers can screen stocks this way and that, portfolio manager Christopher Martin, 45, relies heavily on Yankee shrewdness. In the five years through September 30, his $500-million...
ITT is reportedly planning to cut as many as 630 of the 900 employees at its Manhattan headquarters through early retirement and layoffs. Honeywell announced it would eliminate 4,000 jobs, or 4.3% ...
After serving as Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Transportation, Drew Lewis joined Warner Amex Cable Communications in 1983, hoping to make it profitable in two years (FORTUNE, October 29, 1984). A tr...
IT WAS the highlight of my life,'' says Harwood Cochrane. To get that kind of rating from a 74-year-old multimillionaire, it would have to be a big deal -- and it was. In October the plain-spoken C...
GENTLEMAN FARMER and businessman Drew Lewis has few peers when it comes to shoveling out a barn and emerging clean. In 1986 he did it twice -- in the figurative sense -- finishing a triumphant stin...
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