News Release

BNSF Expands Its Guaranteed On-Time Carload Service

FORT WORTH, Texas, December 16, 2002:

The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company (BNSF) today announced it has expanded its guaranteed on-time carload rail service to seven lanes, including three additional lanes from the Pacific Northwest to Arizona and northern/southern California, and two from northern/southern California to the Midwest.

BNSF now offers guaranteed on-time carload rail service in the following lanes:

• Pacific Northwest to Arizona (NEW)
• Pacific Northwest to the Midwest (October 2002)
• Pacific Northwest to northern California (NEW)
• Pacific Northwest to southern California (NEW)
• Pacific Northwest to Texas (October 2002)
• Northern California to the Midwest (NEW)
• Southern California to the Midwest (NEW)

The guarantee allows shippers to purchase, for a premium, a guarantee for on-time carload rail service in any of these lanes. With the guarantee, BNSF will offer a 100-percent refund for each load that arrives after the agreed-upon transit time at the customer’s location. BNSF measures on-time performance from the time a customer releases the car to the time it is spotted at the customer’s dock.

A subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (NYSE:BNI), BNSF operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America, with 33,000 route miles covering 28 states and two Canadian provinces. BNSF is an industry leader in Web-enabling a variety of customer transactions at www.bnsf.com. The railway moves more intermodal traffic than any other rail system in the world, is America’s largest grain-hauling railroad, transports the mineral components of many of the products we depend on daily, and hauls enough coal to generate more than 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States.

BNSF Headquarters
BNSF Railway Company
2650 Lou Menk Dr. 2nd Floor
P.O. Box 961057
Fort Worth, TX 76161-0057
Phone: (817) 352-1000