This is a weekly report that analyzes operational and service trends for the North American Class I railroads. This edition incorporates weekly operating data through February 28.

The hits just keep coming with another arctic blast this week and some extensive flooding, primary impacting Norfolk Southern in Southern West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia and Eastern Ohio,…

This report analyzes operational and service trends for the North American Class I railroads, incorporating weekly operating data through Jan. 31. January is typically the most challenging month for rail…

The big winter weather challenge has now come and gone in the form of last week’s polar vortex. The Eastern railroads got doubly lucky as they also had to contend…

Here, we look at weekly operating data through Jan. 10. U.S. West Coast container imports were strong last year, particularly in the second half, driven initially by diversions from the…

In recent weeks, we’ve been highlighting positive trends in some of the operating metrics, and this augurs well for 2025, particularly on a year-over-year basis in the first half. Some…

We’ve made some major changes to the CPKC data this week. Ever since the KCS operational consolidation on April 14, 2023, we’ve been using the consolidated velocity and dwell from…

The 2022 Service Crisis is still too fresh in the minds of rail customers, inhibiting share recapture from trucks, and this will remain the case for some time. However, the…

We attended CSX Investor Day 2024 on Nov. 7. There are 25 Wall Street analysts who cover CSX and 24 of them went to hear what CSX’s average annual EPS…

The Eastern railroads have had an eventful hurricane season, including landfalls from hurricanes Debby on Aug. 5 (Cat 1), Helene on Sept.26 (Cat 4), and Milton on Oct. 9 (Cat…

Bend, Don’t Break: Last year we tracked a domestic intermodal surge on BNSF and used it as an example of the Bend-Don’t-Break playbook, which acknowledges that railroads will naturally slow…

On April 30, 2024, the Surface Transportation Board issued a decision that introduces narrow-scope reciprocal switching into the U.S. freight rail industry. That decision prescribes that two supporting data sets…

Hurricane Survival Mode: We now have operating data for the week of Sept. 28 through Oct. 4. It encapsulates most of the damage from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in…

The STB hearing on U.S. Class I volume growth—or lack thereof—shined a spotlight on this important issue, and before that spotlight fades and we get back to the business of…

Covering the railroads for a long time does strange things to a person. We were glued to The Weather Channel, with Hurricane Helene’s Category 4 track resulting in a direct…

We’ve apparently been in a freight recession for two years now, but rail intermodal is having a strong growth year, aided by an easy comp against 2023, which was the…

We’re always on the lookout for good news and last week we highlighted the strong recent improvement in BNSF terminal dwell. And with dual lockouts at CN and CPKC, we…

We heavily scrutinize operating metrics during, and on the back of, the four major public holidays during the year (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving) due to the…

Railroad volume growth has been scarce over the past two years, but it has shown up—primarily in the form of international intermodal—so far in 2024. The chart below consolidates loads…

Tough May weather in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana plunged Union Pacific’s (UP) network velocity to a five-year low of 22.7 mph in the week ending June 7 and, after a…