Freight Railroad

New route promises three-day delivery, enhancing supply chain efficiency

Late last week, the Washington, D.C.-based Surface Transportation Board (STB), an independent adjudicatory and economic-regulatory agency charged by Congress with resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers, said that Chairman Martin J. Oberman has officially retired.

Facing questions about its leadership in advance of its Annual Meeting of Shareholders today, due to a proxy bout and attempted management takeover by activist investor Ancora Alternatives LLC, Atlanta-based Class I railroad carrier Norfolk Southern is likely breathing a collective sigh of relief today.

Feedback regarding the recent adoption of the reciprocal switching rule by the Washington, D.C.-based Surface Transportation Board (STB), an independent adjudicatory and economic-regulatory agency charged by Congress with resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers, could be viewed as mixed.

In this podcast, Tony Hatch offered up his views on various aspects of the freight railroad and intermodal sectors, including: market conditions, service levels, volumes, and nearshoring, among others. 

FRA officials explained having a second crewmember provides various safety functions that are not able to be realized on a single-person crew. As an example, without the final rule, it noted how on a train with one crewmember, railroads could initiate single-crew operations and not perform a rigorous risk assessment, mitigate known risks or notify the FRA.

Rail carloads, at 214,585, fell 3.7% annually, and intermodal containers and trailers, at 258,077, saw a 13.5% annual gain.

At this point, anyone who has seen Martin J. Oberman, Chairman of the Surface Transportation Board (STB), a Washington, D.C.-based independent adjudicatory and economic-regulatory agency charged by Congress with resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers, speak at a freight railroad conference, knows he is not holding anything back. That again was the case, when he gave a keynote speech at last week’s Southeastern Association of Rail Shippers (SEARS) 2024 Spring Meeting in Atlanta.

Rail carloads, at 234,449, increased 6.5% annually, and intermodal container and trailer volumes, at 268,134 units, rose 8.6% annually.

On December 18, CBP said that it is continuing to surge all available resources to safely process migrants in response to increased levels of migrant encounters at the Southwest Border, fueled by smugglers peddling disinformation to prey on vulnerable individuals.

In a wide-ranging speech at the Northeast Association of Railroad Shippers (NEARS) Fall Conference in Portland Maine, Martin Oberman, Chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Surface Transportation Board (STB), addressed various pertinent freight railroad trends and themes, including service, rates, and the importance of the industry for the United States economy, among others.

Industry stakeholders have, for years, referenced the environmental impacts that railroads provide, in this statistic: rail can move one ton of freight nearly 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel. That was true years ago and remains true today, too. And it serves as a thesis, of sorts, in a new report issued by the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Railroads, entitled “Freight Railroads & Climate Change: Reducing Emissions, Enhancing Resiliency.”

Rail carloads, at 235,307, rose 3.5% annually, and intermodal containers and trailers, at 245,691 units, fell 11.6% annually.

Rail carloads, at 231,718, saw an annual decline by a very small margin, falling 0.04% annually, and intermodal containers and trailers, at 240,141 units, were off 12.1%.

Class I railroad carrier Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) is making significant intermodal inroads, since formally becoming a collective entity on April 14, following the official of the company’s merger by the Surface Transportation Board in mid-March, with recent announcements heralding new respective intermodal agreements with Knight-Swift Transportation and Schneider National.