Union Pacific Railway
Union Pacific touts link with Iowa's agriculture PDF Print E-mail
Written by Dan Piller - The Des Moines Register   
Friday, 02 October 2025 00:00
BOONE, Iowa — Union Pacific Railroad Chairman Jim Young wants Iowa farmers to know that his railroad has 20,000 covered hopper grain cars, 8,000 of them in storage, along with 1,800 locomotives ready to haul the corn and soybean harvest that has begun.

Union Pacific, based in Omaha, plays an important role in export movements because of its links to Pacific Northwest ports, as well as its gateways through Houston and into Mexico.

"Of course, we can't always get the grain movements exactly when we want them," Young said Thursday on a visit to dedicate the new Kate Shelley Bridge over the Des Moines River between Ogden and Boone.
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Timing is a problem. Soybean export markets have been good, providing Union Pacific with steady trainloads out of Iowa. But corn export shipments were down 49 percent through midyear. More troublesome, corn prices of less than $3.50 per bushel will make farmers unlikely to want to ship corn anywhere for a while.
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Union Pacific freight volumes rising PDF Print E-mail
Written by Joe Ruff - Omaha World-Herald   
Friday, 11 September 2025 00:00
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific executive Rob Knight told analysts Wednesday that freight volumes were slowly improving but to not expect a traditional Christmas peak because retailers were taking a cautious approach to consumer spending over the holidays.

“Over the last several years, frankly, what used to be a spike of a peak became more of a bump, and right now we're not even seeing much of that,” said Knight, chief financial officer for U.P. “I think folks are going to be very cautious about building too high of inventory.”

The third quarter of July through September typically is busy with rail cars hauling televisions, toys and other consumer items as stores restock shelves for Christmas. But consumers are trimming their spending as job losses mount in the nation's deepest recession since World War II.

The economy appears to have stabilized, but no big uptick in business was expected in 2010, Knight said.

“We see it sort of as ‘steady as she goes' as we go into 2010.”

Freight volumes for July and August improved over the first half of the year in the automobile, chemicals and intermodal sectors but remained well below what the railroad could handle, Knight said.
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