Guest Comment: The UP–NS merger will be measured at the loading dock 

By Anne Reinke, president and CEO, Intermodal Association of North America 

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has moved the proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger into full review. Between now and a final ruling next year, regulators will hear from railroads, rival carriers, labor, states and shipper groups. Nearly everyone will take a side. IANA takes the customer’s. 

Our members sit on every side of this transaction: railroads, IMCs and 3PLs, motor carriers, ports, equipment providers and the shippers who pay for all of it. All of them answer to the same customer: the shipper. And shippers, many of them IANA members themselves, are asking one question: Will my freight move better? 

The potential is real. Consolidation promises a single-line network from coast to coast that can shorten cross-country transit, remove handoffs that slow containers and put rail in direct competition for freight that still moves by truck. Done right, it is the largest truck-to rail opportunity intermodal has seen in a generation. That is the outcome intermodal is built for. 

Consolidation is one vision for growth. Collaboration is the other: independent railroads working together at the interchange, with coordinated schedules, shared service plans and data that travels with the box. Both visions promise the same thing: freight that moves faster and more reliably than it does today. Both depend on the same two conditions: customers who buy in and operations that deliver. Both are promises until the freight moves. 

The timing raises the stakes. Tight truck capacity is sending freight to rail and first-time shippers are testing the mode. Many will still be judging rail when the two networks begin to combine. Trucking's constraints opened this window. Only service keeps it open. 

Potential isn't performance. This proposed merger puts consolidation to the test. Shippers will measure it three ways: 

1. Reliability. The case for the merger rests on a promise of single-line service. Interchanges are where containers sit, where information drops and where accountability blurs, so removing them could help. But rail integrations have had a mixed record in their first years. Shippers absorbed the cost in missed deliveries and lost business, and freight moved back to the highway. They haven't forgotten. A rough integration wouldn't only cost two railroads. It would hand trucking an argument intermodal has worked hard to retire. 

2. Resilience. Scale should make a network harder to break. Shippers will want to see how the combined railroad absorbs disruption, not only how it performs on a good day. Contingency plans, recovery commitments and clear communication when service slips are what turn size into strength. A network with fewer interchanges also has fewer ways around a hub that goes down. 

3. Optionality. Shippers build supply chains on choices: routing options, gateways and the ability to put a lane out to bid. Intermodal grows when IMCs and 3PLs can build door to-door solutions across carriers. The combined network should expand those options, not narrow them. Take away a shipper’s options and they’ll find one. The highway is always bidding. 

The merger record before the STB should answer four questions. What service commitments will the combined railroad make and how will they be measured and published? What is the integration plan and what happens to customers if it slips? How will the combined network work with other railroads at the hubs where freight changes hands? And how will customers be heard as the network changes? 

Those questions don't belong to shippers alone. They belong to the whole supply chain. The railroad moves the box. The IMC or 3PL designs the move and owns the customer relationship. The drayage carrier handles the first and last mile. The shipper makes the call. Whatever shape the rail network takes, the chain still runs on collaboration. No one moves freight alone. 

The STB’s record is open for comment through Nov. 18. It will be full of financial projections and competitive analysis. It also needs operating experience from the people who will live with the outcome at the terminal gate and the loading dock. The railroads are promising scale. Shippers will judge service. The merger succeeds only if scale delivers service. 

Anne Reinke is president and CEO of the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA), which represents the combined interests of the intermodal freight transportation industry. IANA aims to promote the growth of efficient intermodal freight transportation through innovation, education and dialogue.