Chief financial officer Fredrik Eliasson told guests at the Citi 2013 US and European Industrials Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on Tuesday that the company had a more diverse line-up of business than ever before – but 82% of it was outside of the coal industry.

He told the group, which included the Jacksonville Business Journal, that the Florida-based rail shipper’s biggest area of growth has been intermodal, including container cargo, which has risen 32% since 2009 to about $2.2 billion.

Overall, intermodal and merchandise shipments make up 82% of its volumes. Domestic coal, meanwhile, makes up just 14% of its loads.

The balance is quite different than CSX’s picture in 2006, when merchandise and intermodal shipments made up 74% of its total and coal made up 24%.

Eliasson said that headwinds for the coal industry were still expected. The diversification has become even more important in light of those changes, he said.

Despite the changing tides, the executive said that CSX’s operating income had improved by about 8% and it had reduced its operating ratio from 77.7% to 70.6% percent since 2009.

To date in the company’s third quarter, which is about 10 weeks’ old, Eliasson said that overall volumes were up about 2%.

However, he noted, coal markets had fallen 6% for domestic coal and 12% for export coal.