Robert Krebs

Robert D. Krebs has headed three major United States railroads in succession, leading the Southern Pacific (SP) when it was acquired by Santa Fe Industries, rising to lead the resulting Santa Fe Pacific Corporation, and finally being chosen to head the new Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) when Santa Fe Pacific (the holding company for the Santa Fe railroad) merged with Burlington Northern. He started out working for SP subsidiary Cotton Belt in the early 1960's becoming the youngest Superintendent of Cotton Belt's Pine Bluff Division. One of the things he had was absolute honesty and a temper when it came to running his railroad. According to Fred Frailey, one of Kreb's delimas was that Missouri Pacific's Dupo Tower operator held Cotton Belt's Blue Streak with Krebs riding it for a MP train to advance. Rob then went to the tower to inquire why the op had held Cotton Belt's hottest train for the MP train to pass, and told the op that he would have his job if he did it again. As payback Krebs called the tower a day later to hold MP's hottest train for the same duration that his Blue Streak was held and got a call from MP's general manager wondering why MP's train was delayed and Krebs told him that there was absolutely no reason why the BSM should have been delayed. This event and the fact that Krebs knew how to run a railroad with little delay helped him move up the ranks and eventually become president of the SP and later CEO of ATSF and BNSF. He retired as CEO of BNSF in 2000 and left the board when he retired as chairman on April 17 2002.^[1] On May 13, 2005, Krebs joined the Board of Directors for RailPower Technologies,^[2] a position from which he subsequently resigned on September 9 2005, citing personal reasons.^[3]

References