More good progress from CSX, as it continues to rebound from the early April trough in operational efficiency.
Operating car inventory has now fallen in four consecutive weeks, from its peak of 139,054 to 130,292 through May 9. We’re now within 1% of where car counts were prior to the Baltimore Howard Street Tunnel closure and associated reroutes. In the chart below, also note the big reduction in the proportion of these cars that were slow-to- move (idle for 48-plus hours), which dropped from 2.7% to 1.9% in the week ending May 9. In absolute terms, slow-to-move cars fell from 3,615 to 2,536, which is a low we haven’t seen since early January.
Elsewhere, terminal dwell also improved for the fourth week and has essentially normalized, while average dwell for CSX’s five hump yards has closed to within 8% of normal.
The one key metric that isn’t quite cooperating is velocity; specifically intermodal velocity, which remains 7% lower than where it was prior to the Howard Street Tunnel closure Feb. 1. This makes sense because the impacted I-95 corridor was intermodal-heavy. Likely, there’s a lower velocity ceiling now in place until the reroutes are removed (~4Q2025).
May 14 Cumberland Sub Flooding
While progress has been robust over the last reported month, be aware there may be a pause in next week’s data due to a flooding disruption on CSX’s Cumberland Subdivision in Maryland. Of course, this is the route handling the reroutes around the Howard Street tunnel, so it couldn’t have happened at a worse place. According to service alerts on CSX’s website, the outage was only for one day or so.
In terms of the bigger picture, CSX deteriorated for 11 weeks and has now recovered for four, so that’s 15 weeks for customers to notice that something is amiss, plus of course the damage to earnings, which 1Q2025 results illustrated. While 2Q2025 will be similarly compromised, if CSX can complete its recovery and tighten up the operation over the next few weeks, it could get back on track and start 3Q2025 with a relatively clean slate.
