Article: Back on track: how an old-fashioned Kansan with railroading in his blood breathed new life into the UP.(Regional Report: Midwest)(Union Pacific)

By any account, Union Pacific's takeover of Southern Pacific in 1996 and 1997 was a train wreck. Rail cars bound for Houston from Chicago ended up in Los Angeles, thanks to incompatible software and a shortage of locomotives. Coal didn't reach electric utilities. Plastics molders didn't get their pellets. All in all, the botched merger cost Union Pacific's customers $2 billion. In turn, investors punished the venerable, Omaha-based company, forcing down its stock price from $73 in 1996 to $37 in 2000, wiping out about $9 billion in market capitalization.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Yet this is a company planted firmly in prairie sod, where an exec's word is ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!