When boxcars come to stay

user-gravatar Headshot
Updated Dec 14, 2009

Railroads were advertising a lot during last year’s period of rising fuel prices, touting their good cost-per-mile for moving a ton of commodities. Lest you think the super-heavy-duty engines are stealing your livelihood, consider this anecdotal evidence from the Wall Street Journal:

Boxcars used to be a “fleeting sight” in the town of New Castle, Ind. For the past year, though, 100-plus yellow boxcars have been parked in the middle of town. The line stretches for a mile. “Now an elementary-school playground sits only feet from a line of rail cars covered with curse words,” writes The Journal.

It isn’t just New Castle. “The nation’s five largest railroads have put more than 30% of their boxcars – 206,000 in all – into storage, according to the Association of American Railroads. Placed end-to-end, the cars would stretch from New York to Salt Lake City,” says the article.

Of course, there are many more parked trailers and out-of-service ships, too, but as far as the truck-rail balance of freight, I don’t think it’s changed even a full percentage point in the 10-plus years I’ve worked in this industry. Trucks still haul almost 70 percent of the nation’s freight, says the American Trucking Associations.

New
Overdrive's Load Profit Analyzer
Know your costs? Compute the potential profit in any truckload, analyze per-day and per-mile breakouts, and compare real offers on multiple loads or game out hypothetical rate/lane scenarios. Enter your trucking business's fixed and variable costs, and load information, to get started.
Try it out!
Attachments Idea Book Cover

— Max Heine