News
11/12/25
Commodity rail shippers push for more train data
Houston, 11 December (Argus) — Industrial shippers of commodities like grain and
petrochemicals want federal regulators to widen the scope of proposed rules that
would require Class I railroads to report more data on their on-time service
performance. US rail regulator the Surface Transportation Board (STB) in
September put the industry on notice that it intends to issue rules to require
that each of the six biggest railroads, including Union Pacific and Norfolk
Southern, report two new categories of performance data to the agency. The first
would benchmark railroads' shipments against their original estimated time of
arrival (OETA) and the second would measure "industry spot and pull" data, or
ISP, to determine whether shipments are picked up and delivered within their
planned service window. The board action aims to address rail shippers'
long-running concerns that unpredictable rail service is a wild card in their
supply chains, as many shippers rely nearly completely on rail to get their
goods to market. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), an
industry group that lobbies for US refiners and petrochemical manufacturers,
applauded the STB for working to address "chronic freight rail service
failures." The OETA is meant to track a carrier's targeted arrival time when it
dispatches a cargo and then flag the percentage of weekly shipments that reach
their destinations no later than 24 hours after an intended target, the STB said
in its proposal. The AFPM, whose members include companies like Dow, Occidental
Chemical and Ineos who collectively ship about 2.5mn carloads a year, said OETA
data should be broken out by region, terminal, and corridor "to reveal localized
bottlenecks often masked by system averages." As proposed, the STB's OETA
measurement would apply to manifest train service, where trains haul an
assortment of railcar types, and not to unit trains, which exclusively haul one
railcar type or bulk commodity, such as coal, grain or crude. Grain shippers and
the US Department of Agriculture disagreed with the STB's decision to exclude
unit train shipments from the OETA measurement. The National Grain and Feed
Association, whose members include Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and other
biofuels makers, said that late unit train deliveries of commodities like grain,
ethanol or coal "can result in proportionally greater harm to the
shipper/receiver" than smaller manifest shipments. The USDA agreed that unit
train shipments should be included in the OETA measurement, and pointed out that
about 75pc of US railed corn and soybean shipments in 2023 traveled in trains
hauling more than 75 railcars, which would not be captured by manifest shipment
data. Demand for agricultural products is highly seasonal, and missed delivery
windows "can halt processing lines, disrupt export programs, and force shippers
to carry excess private car inventory to buffer uncertainty," the agency said.
The Association of American Railroads (AAR), which lobbies on behalf of Class I
railroads, pushed back on industry requests to widen the OETA to include unit
train shipments, and told the STB that several railroads do not currently
generate the metrics. Adding the reporting requirements "would add regulatory
burden, waste resources, and misrepresent service on the network," the AAR said.
By Chris Baltimore Send comments and request more information at
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