FMC Corp. wins rail rate case

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 6/1/2000

The Surface Transportation Board has ruled in favor of FMC Corp. in a case it brought against the Union Pacific Railroad-probably the first time a shipper has won an unreasonable-rate case that did not involve coal.

The board ruled that 15 different rates charged to FMC were unreasonably high. It ordered the railroad to reduce those rates and pay reparations to FMC for shipments of soda ash, sodium bicarbonate, sodium sesquicarbonate, phosphorous, and phosphate rock. The board said UP must reduce the rates for those shipments by 1.6 percent for 1997, 6.8 percent for 1998, and 9.5 percent for 1999.

The STB said it could not examine the reasonableness of another rate challenged by FMC-a rate for transporting coke from Kemmerer, Wyo., to Don, Idaho-because an intermodal alternative for that transportation was available to FMC. The board said it could only evaluate the reasonableness of a railroad's rates in situations in which the carrier had "market dominance" over the traffic involved.