Norfolk Southern is one of the largest freight railroads in the eastern U.S., operating roughly 19,100 route miles across 22 states and the District of Columbia, primarily serving the Southeast, East, and Midwest. Norfolk Southern hauls raw materials, industrial goods, and consumer products for shippers, manufacturers, utilities, and mining companies, competing primarily with CSX and trucking. Revenue is organized into three commodity groups: Merchandise (~63% of revenue), covering agriculture, chemicals, metals, construction, and automotive; Intermodal (~25%), covering containerized and trailer freight for IMCs, steamship lines, and retailers; and Coal (~12%), covering both utility and export/metallurgical coal. Norfolk Southern charges customers per carload or intermodal unit, with pricing driven by commodity type, lane, contract terms, and fuel surcharges. The business is capital-intensive with ~$36B in net property and roughly $2B in annual capex, creating a high fixed-cost base where profitability is highly sensitive to volume. Efficiency is measured by Operating Ratio (OR), which improved from 76.5% in FY23 to 64.2% in FY25, driven by its "PSR 2.0" Precision Scheduled Railroading initiative, focused on heavier trains, better locomotive utilization, and reduced overhead. Norfolk Southern is currently pending acquisition by Union Pacific, which would create the first transcontinental U.S. rail network and is subject to review by the Surface Transportation Board.