Opinion: Size, Weight and Freight Flexibility

By Dan Lang, Staff Reporter

Walter B. McCormick Jr., president of the American Trucking Associations, recently called upon Edward R. Hamberger, president of the Association of American Railroads, to meet with him to discuss freight transportation productivity.

McCormick urged the rail industry to reconsider, in the light of consumer demands, its knee-jerk opposition to bigger trucks. Although he must have known going in that Hamberger would not budge, McCormick’s goal was to turn the spotlight on the size and weight issue. Not surprisingly, he saw his overture summarily rejected.

Predictably, the railroads will oppose any initiative to increase the cargo capacity of trucks – and do so as aggressively as they can. They must. The AAR’s own research has convinced its members that bigger, heavier trucks would close off the only area of traffic growth they can see on the horizon and cost them billions of dollars in potential annual profits.

But it is hard to drum up widespread support for making freight transportation more costly just to help the railroads make more money. Rail attempts to create furor over “equity” – claiming that trucking has an unfair advantage over rail because of government subsidy for highways – have not resonated with either the public or the politicians. So the rail industry turned to something with a much higher emotional factor: the safety of big trucks.

To counter trucking’s productivity initiatives, the railroad industry fostered and funded, first, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways and then the Coalition Against Bigger Trucks, to whip up public fear of trucks. Railroaders know – just as ATA knows – that trucks have a continuing image problem, and the rail industry has exploited that problem with great success.

Trucking’s image problem still exists, even though it is contradicted by the facts that illuminate the industry’s success in improving its safety record.

More to the point, what also exists is a massive demand for reliable freight hauling that the railroads cannot possibly meet.

If they can’t carry the freight, who will? It will go by truck – as so much does already.

ATA continues to ask government policy-makers this question: If no viable alternative to trucking exists for many of America’s shippers, does it make sense to impose artificial rules – or artificial charges – to make trucking more expensive and less productive than it could be?

For decades, railroads have positioned themselves as the more economical, safer, more environmentally pure freight transportation mode. They encouraged environmentalists to dream of wide open highways for solar-powered cars while the nation’s freight rolled by – out of sight – on the tracks.

If we could just get rid of passenger service, the railroads said in the 1970s, we could really do a great job hauling the nation’s freight . . .

If the government would just put some taxpayer money into the terrible trackage situation in the Northeast, they said, we could really do a great job . . .

If we could just get better tax treatment . . .

If we could just be deregulated . . .

If we could just head off the threat of big trucks, railroads would make the investment necessary to . . .

But the railroads got all their wishes and became extremely profitable. And they are still not able to compete with the service that trucks offer.

The events that followed June 1, 1999, when Norfolk Southern and CSX began operating over the former Conrail lines, gave a clear message to all: Railroads won’t be able to compete any time soon. Two railroads that are, by broad agreement, the best in the nation, hovered on the brink of meltdowns when, after a year of planning, they couldn’t handle the new traffic brought by their purchase of Conrail.

Seven months later, shippers on these two railroads are still complaining about poor service, still turning to trucks to handle loads that formerly traveled intermodal.

Couple this failure with the far more serious difficulty on the Union Pacific line a few years earlier, and we can see that railroads cannot be depended upon to take over much more freight than they already carry.

Freed from artificial restraints, trucks can move the freight today and in the future.

Policy-makers concerned about the economy will understand that.

Certainly, the railroads will raise their familiar drumbeat of fear. But that tactic can only work if they can convincingly offer themselves to shippers as a viable alternative.

And they can’t.

At the same time, improvements made — and in the making — in the areas of truck safety and exhaust emissions can reassure those who hear the railroads’ plaints.

The arguments that the trucking industry can make for flexibility are cogent and convincing — and they have the added virtue of justifying actions that many see as necessary to the economic welfare of the nation.