The BNSF Railway Company is one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America, second to the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) (its primary competitor for Western U.S. freight), and is one of eleven North American Class I railroads. It has 44,000 employees, 32,500 miles of track in 28 states. It has a main line running through Kingman, Arizona.

The BNSF railroad is a 24/7, 365-day-a-year business, and no equipment bears more of the load than the locomotive. BNSF owns and operates nearly 8,000 locomotives, with about three-fourths of these in through-freight service.

The over-the-road machines haul freight on average more than 300 miles per day - about 100,000 miles a year. The typical BNSF locomotive has a life of 35 years before being retired. In that time, a locomotive will travel between 3.4 million and 4.8 million miles, equivalent to almost 200 trips around the earth’s equator.