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9/6/2024
By Pat Foran, Editor-in-Chief
A consummate communicator and conciliator, and a longtime Chicago Cubs fan, Pat Ottensmeyer was a strategic thinker who connected the North American rail map’s dots. He was an empathetic mentor and as thoughtful an interview subject as I’ve ever talked with. Along with his many friends and former colleagues, I was still processing his passing late last month.
Pat, who served as CEO of Kansas City Southern from 2016 until April 2023 when KCS was acquired by Canadian Pacific, died on July 26. He was 67.
“Pat was one of the four major, historic railroaders I first met in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, along with Jim Foote, Mike Haverty and Hunter Harrison,” says transportation analyst, RailTrends® program consultant and Progressive Railroading columnist Tony Hatch. “Jim died too young as well earlier this year. Pat was a great leader. He was also a very good friend.”
Pat typically demurred if his many talents and traits became the topic of conversation. He’d credit his parents for instilling his strategic acumen and pragmatic approach. Pat told me they also taught him and his five siblings, who grew up on the family farm, in Vincennes, Indiana, to be their own people. To be themselves, always.
In the mid-1980s, that meant hurling himself into banking. At that time, railroad mergers were just beginning to reach a fever pitch, and it wasn’t long before Pat was working with M&A-minded roads seeking capital and financial expertise. In 1992, Pat, who’d had been an account rep/loan officer for the Santa Fe Southern Pacific, signed on with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway as VP of finance/treasurer. In 1995, ATSF merged with Burlington Northern Railroad, forming BNSF.
In 1999, Pat left the industry, in part to keep his family in Chicago when BNSF moved its headquarters to Fort Worth, Texas. He returned to rail in 2006 when he was named EVP and CFO of KCS.
“That year, I was constantly doing road shows, trying to convince people to invest in our company now that we had 100% of [Mexico’s former Northeast Railway],” says former KCS CEO Mike Haverty, who retired in 2013 and was the first rail exec to talk about rail’s bigger picture in a north-south context. “I started taking Pat with me and he immediately picked up the story. He could tell it himself. That’s when I realized just how intelligent and articulate Pat was.”
That helped make Pat the right person to be KCS’ EVP of sales and marketing in 2008, president in 2015 and CEO in 2016.
“One thing Pat believed was service begets growth — there had to be good service to grow the top line,” says Haverty. “Other CEOs focused on PSR and OR. Pat was able to balance the two.”
That’s one reason Progressive Railroading and RailTrends presented Pat with the 2019 Railroad Innovator Award. His nurturing of that north-south vision was another. Witness the CP-KCS combination and his ongoing interest in U.S.-Mexico trade relations.
“That’s got to be his legacy,” Haverty says.
So is Pat’s capacity to listen, ability to impart knowledge in his inimitable, unassuming way, and willingness to be himself, always.
“Pat was a major backer of RailTrends from the early days and was on our agenda for this year,” says Hatch, who wore a Cubs cap Pat had given him while attending his friend’s celebration of life event held Aug. 23 at Union Station Kansas City. “He will be badly missed.”