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August 2026
By Jeff Stagl, Managing Editor
In 2022, Steve Angel retired as CEO of Linde plc. He continued to serve as chairman of the multinational chemical company — the world’s largest industrial gas supplier as measured by market share and revenue — into late 2025.
That’s when retirement took a turn for Angel, 71. As did the trajectory of his more than 45-year career in the industrials sector.
An opportunity arose to become CSX’s president and CEO after the Class I parted ways with its former leader, Joe Hinrichs. Although Angel had spent a couple of decades leading large industrial companies — specifically industrial gas companies — he had developed an interest in rail that never waned. During a 22-year stint at GE from 1979 to 2001, he worked directly with locomotives and rail operations.
In addition to remaining Linde’s chairman after retirement, Angel continued to serve as the non-executive chairman for GE Vernova and as a board member for GE Aerospace and Stoke Space Technologies. But all the time spent in board rooms — and in retirement — wasn’t fulfilling. So, the timing seemed right to extend his career.
“Board work is boring to me. I missed the day to day,” says Angel.
That made a return to a C suite, an adoption of a new challenge and a dive into the rail industry enticing.
“I had found this is an industry I have a lot of interest in,” Angel says.
In late September 2025, he became CSX’s eighth president and CEO in the company’s 46-year history. And Angel since has strived to refocus objectives and establish a strong and stable foundation at the railroad. He has adopted the role of facilitator in attempt to transform the Class I to the point that it’s more profitable, more productive and more apt to find ways to improve each day.
During his first 10 months as leader, Angel has focused on sharpening accountability and execution by aligning priorities, performance management and incentives around clear financial results. In addition, there are more stringent efforts to ensure the right people are in the right roles; the most critical positions across the company are evaluated; parts of the organization are realigned; and there’s a greater emphasis on developing talent and building a stronger pipeline of future leaders.
Managers across the railroad now have a bigger responsibility for and a larger stake in driving results, and their performance is reviewed frequently across budgets, commercial initiatives and operational goals to ensure progress is being made against company goals.
Angel’s past successes as a catalyst of change played heavily into his hiring. CSX’s board at the time characterized him as a visionary in creating long-term value and an expert in guiding companies through significant transformation.
For example, he oversaw the merger of Linde AG and Praxair Inc. in 2018 that created the world’s largest industrial gas and engineering company. Angel also developed a reputation for successfully driving financial performance and productivity at the companies he led, including margin improvement and cost reductions. He was chairman, president and CEO of Praxair for 11 years and CEO of Linde for four.
Angel has a proven track record of leading high-performing teams, fostering a collaborative culture, advancing strategic priorities and maximizing shareholder value.
“Steve was the clear choice to lead CSX,” said CSX Chairman John Zillmer in a press release issued on Sept. 29, 2025. “We are confident Steve has the right skillset, expertise and background to help us deliver our next phase of growth.”
There are some similarities between the industrial gas and railroad industries, such as the capital-intensive nature and the importance of safety in both, Angel says. Safety is a sacred responsibility, he strongly believes.
Another similarity is company vision. Linde is striving to be the best-performing industrial gas company in the world, while CSX is aiming to be the best-performing railroad in North America.
For Angel, “best performing” means top financial performance such as operating margins, return on capital and cash flow, but also optimal operational performance such as safety, customer service, employee engagement, integrity and ethics. None are mutually exclusive, he believes.
Managers across the railroad now have a bigger responsibility for and a larger stake in driving results, and their performance is reviewed frequently across budgets, commercial initiatives and operational goals
To be the best, it’s vital to excel in every key aspect of running a railroad through a concerted company-wide effort. And that’s the type of transformation Angel is striving for at CSX.
“It sounds trite, but you have to make the most important things, the most important things. We run a railroad, and we want it to run safely, reliably, efficiently and with the highest integrity. Performance will always be the focus,” he says. “The pillars are safety, customer service and employee engagement. The bedrock values are safety and integrity.”
A main goal for Angel is continuous improvement, and productivity is a key driver of that. CSX is having a productive year so far. In the second quarter, locomotive efficiency improved 2% to 132 gross ton-miles per available horsepower compared with second-quarter 2025 — bettering the prior year’s mark for the sixth-straight quarter.
In addition, fuel efficiency improved 4% to 0.94 gallons per 1,000 gross ton-miles (its fourth-straight quarter of year-over-year improvement), workforce efficiency improved 6% to 49.7 gross ton-miles per rail employee and tonnage per train increased 1% to 8,600 average tons per train.
However, there need to be productivity opportunities to seize in 2027, 2028 and beyond, Angel stresses.
“I call it building productivity muscle. You build a productivity pipeline so you can gain efficiencies and get more productive each year,” he says.
Angel also has tried to reshape and strengthen the senior leadership team. To that end, soon after he assumed the top post, CSX named Kevin Boone (who at the time was executive vice president and chief commercial officer) EVP and chief financial officer to succeed Sean Pelkey and promoted Maryclare Kenney from VP of merchandise sales and marketing to senior VP and CCO.
In addition, Riz Chand became chief human resources officer in February and Steve Watkins assumed the role of chief digital and technology officer in May.
“Of the six biggest jobs behind me, four are in new roles. We have a strong team,” says Angel. “We function well as a team. I would go to war with them.”
CSX also has dedicated and hardworking employees, who equally are a strong asset, Angel says.
“There are good people here,” he says. “We have fourth- and fifth-generation railroaders, and that’s rare, that’s special.”
After financial performance fell short of expectations in 2025, it has bounced back so far in 2026, which has CSXers excited about the organization, Angel believes.
“We are seeing strong financial performance. Everyone wants to be on a winning team, and they feel like winners,” he says.
Financial results in Q2 mostly were in the win column on a year-over-year basis. Total revenue rose 10% to a new quarterly record of $3.93 billion; earnings per share shot up 23% to 44 cents; operating income climbed 17% to $1.5 billion; volume increased 6% to 1.7 million units and the operating margin improved 240 basis points to 38.3% despite fuel-price headwinds impacting 160 basis points.
However, total expenses rose 6% to $2.4 billion as fuel costs skyrocketed 66% to $446 million and labor/fringe costs increased 5% to $831 million. Excluding fuel costs, total expenses dropped 2%.
Based on results through 2026’s first half, CSX raised its full-year financial outlook. The Class I now expects full-year revenue growth by a mid-to high-single digit percentage, operating margin expansion exceeding 350 basis points and free cash flow growth greater than 80%.
In terms of revenue growth in Q2, gains were broad-based across key markets, with coal, merchandise and intermodal revenue up 9%, 8% and 26%, respectively.
But intermodal was the largest contributor — up 9% and double the growth rate of the other two business units due to new service offerings and tight truck capacity that helped accelerate truck-to-rail conversions.
CSX also was able to exploit expanded network capacity enabled by the Howard Street Tunnel expansion in Baltimore and infrastructure improvements in the Blue Ridge Subdivision in North Carolina and Tennessee that were completed last year or in early 2026.
“You have to make the most important things, the most important things. We want to run [the railroad] safely, reliably, efficiently and with the highest integrity.” — Steve Angel, President and CEO
“The Howard Street Tunnel work gave us double-stack clearance,” says Angel.
Moreover, intermodal growth was spurred by interline services. For example, CSX and CPKC recently upgraded their Southeast Mexico Express (SMX) premium intermodal service to offer industry-best, truck-competitive transit times between southeastern markets such as Atlanta, Charlotte or central Florida, and markets in Texas and Mexico such as Dallas and Monterrey.
SMX now features faster transit times with more origin and destination options.
“The SMX service with CPKC shows interline partnerships are working,” says Angel.
While financial results might show the things CSX is working on are panning out, the improvements likely are more the outcome of a plan already instituted by former CEO Joe Hinrichs, says Tony Hatch. That plan already incorporated the Howard Street Tunnel expansion and other driving factors, says Hatch, an independent rail industry analyst and Progressive Railroading columnist.
Angel has focused quite a bit on cost reductions, in part by reducing the workforce. In January, the Class I eliminated 166 management positions, or about 5% of the management workforce, and total headcount was down about 6% at the end of Q2.
“They have focused on productivity and are cost focused. But there has been drastic cost cutting,” says Hatch.
Many rail industry analysts and observers believe Angel was recruited by CSX to improve margins and position the Class I to orchestrate a merger deal with BNSF Railway or identify some other option to help counteract the proposed merger of Union Pacific Railroad and Norfolk Southern Railway.
CSX has received quite a few inquiries about strategic opportunities and will pursue anything that can create compelling value for shareholders, Angel has said publicly. CSX’s merger position is that UP-NS would create a single transcontinental carrier resulting in an industry imbalance that would reduce viable options for shippers, who depend on a competitive and healthy freight-rail system.
But when comes to its value as a merger partner, CSX’s root structure — not its productivity gains — is the enticement, says Hatch. And CSX won’t be the merger deal swinger, he says.
“They are not the ones that would be implementing a merger, which is the skillset of Angel. They would be the ones that would have something implemented,” says Hatch.
Many rail industry analysts and observers have noted that shareholders grew critical of CSX’s financial performance under Hinrichs, especially its shrinking margin, due to his particular skillset. He was appointed president and CEO in September 2022 to succeed Jim Foote.
Hinrichs’ main objective was to restore solid relationships with various stakeholders — especially rail labor unions — that had eroded under Foote. He also was charged with fixing the culture at CSX to boost morale.
Since those objectives took up most of his time, CSX’s margin slipped over time, analysts and observers say.
Hinrichs was an engaging, personable and relatable CEO who gave speeches at many rail industry events and investor conferences, spent a lot of time meeting with people and was heavily active on social media. Angel is a dedicated, no-nonsense and nose-to-the-grindstone leader who prefers to be in his office for long hours instead of attending conferences and ignores the notions of developing a high-profile social media presence or public persona.
Some analysts and observers are convinced he’s the type of leader CSX needs now to focus on restoring financial performance and positioning the organization for the business environment to come if UP-NS passes regulatory muster.
CSX is lucky to have landed a person of Angel’s caliber — and track record of successful performance — as leader, says Farrukh Bezar, a managing partner of Lynwood Partners LLC and operating advisor for Littlejohn & Co., who served as CSX’s SVP and chief strategy officer from May 2019 to April 2024.
“He’s the adult in the room who can instill a performance-based culture,” Bezar says. “He’s quite an accomplished person. I think he will be successful.”
Some analysts and observers believe Angel will only be the leader in the short term until CSX’s post-merger future is determined.
“I don’t think he was brought in to run CSX for a decade before selling it,” said Jim Cramer, a financial expert and author, while hosting his Mad Money show on CNBC in early July. “While CSX should do fine, even in a fairly stagnant economy, I think it is going to be a big winner if the economy actually picks up steam, and a humongous winner if they somehow manage to attract a takeover bid. At CSX, I liked Joe. I like Steve. I think it’s going to work.”
Angel is convinced it will. And he isn’t interested in gathering opinions on it. He has a job to do, and that’s job No. 1.
It helps that the senior team is moving in lockstep to help him achieve his objectives, says Angel.
“The team has been open to the leadership I’ve been providing. I’m not seeing resistance in every corner of the building,” he says.
He can use that receptivity — and teamwork from top to bottom — since the continuous-improvement effort figures to be an ongoing endeavor.
“We are always looking for opportunities to improve,” says Angel.
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