STB Economics Leadership Changes: What Rail Shippers Should Put in Their Evidence File

Leadership changes at the Surface Transportation Board rarely alter a shipper's daily operating plan. They should, however, prompt a review of the evidence behind that plan.

The STB appointed Marty Schlenker, a former BNSF executive, to lead its Office of Economics and named Terrence McDermott senior adviser to Chairman Patrick Fuchs, according to FreightWaves. The Office of Economics provides the analysis behind decisions involving rail rates, service, competition, mergers, and industry performance. Its work turns operating facts into regulatory findings.

For shippers, the practical lesson is not to speculate about how new officials may decide future matters. It is to make sure their own records can withstand economic scrutiny. A complaint assembled after service fails is weaker than a consistent evidence file built shipment by shipment.

Economic analysis starts with comparable facts

Rail disputes often begin with a simple business complaint: rates rose, cars arrived late, switching failed, or demurrage charges accumulated. Regulators need more. They must determine what happened, compared with what benchmark, over which period, and with what effect.

That makes definitions critical. A shipper should document what “on time” means at each point: railroad ETA, appointment window, constructive placement, actual placement, release, and pickup. Keep the original event timestamps as well as any later corrections. Record the source system, time zone, and party responsible for each event.

Industry totals are useful context but cannot substitute for lane-level evidence. Logistics Management reported that through the first 37 weeks of 2026, U.S. railroads handled 8,444,095 carloads, up 2.7% year over year, and 10,477,086 intermodal units, up 4.1%. A growing market may affect capacity and dwell, but it does not prove why one facility experienced poor service. Preserve both the broad market benchmark and the local operating record.

Build the file around five evidence categories

First, retain a complete lane record. For every movement, capture origin, destination, commodity, equipment, route, interchange points, billed rate, accessorials, requested date, promised date, and actual milestones. Do not overwrite the original plan when a railroad revises an ETA.

Second, preserve service performance. Track transit time, terminal dwell, missed switches, cars online, bad orders, bunching, and days without scheduled service. Store the raw events behind every dashboard measure. Monthly averages can hide a damaging tail in which a small share of shipments produces most plant disruptions.

Third, connect demurrage and accessorial charges to physical events. Retain notices, free-time calculations, invoices, disputes, credits, gate records, and the operational reason a car could not move. Separate customer-controlled delay from circumstances such as missed switches, inaccessible placement, congestion, or erroneous billing.

Fourth, document competitive options. Record reciprocal switching access, interchange feasibility, transload alternatives, trucking substitutes, available sidings, contract limitations, and the cost and lead time required to use each option. An alternative that needs a major capital project or cannot handle the commodity is not equivalent to immediately available competition.

Fifth, quantify business impact. Link rail events to overtime, production curtailment, expedited transportation, inventory shortages, customer penalties, storage, and lost sales. Use consistent accounting rules and retain invoices or calculations. A chronology becomes far more useful when it shows both the operational event and its measurable consequence.

Turn exceptions into an auditable chronology

A strong evidence file explains sequence and causation. For each significant exception, create a record containing the shipment identifier, timestamp, event, expected condition, actual condition, source, owner, follow-up action, carrier response, resolution, and cost impact.

Keep emails and call notes, but do not make them the primary database. Messages are difficult to compare across hundreds of shipments and may omit key milestones. Instead, link communications to structured exception records and preserve attachments in a controlled repository.

Version control matters too. If a carrier changes an event code or an analyst corrects a timestamp, retain the previous value, new value, reason, user, and change time. Establish retention periods with legal counsel and restrict deletion once a dispute or proceeding becomes foreseeable.

This discipline is increasingly relevant because regulators are asking for more operational detail. Supply Chain Dive reported that an STB final rule requires Class I railroads to report two additional metrics weekly, effective July 8, 2026. Shippers should align their internal definitions with public reporting where possible, then document any differences rather than forcing unlike measures into a false comparison.

Prepare separately for rates, service, and mergers

The same data foundation can support different regulatory questions, but the analysis changes.

For a rate matter, preserve contracts, tariffs, shipment characteristics, revenue, volumes, routing, alternatives, and changes over time. Explain unusual costs or service requirements that make a movement different from a superficial comparison lane.

For a service matter, emphasize frequency, reliability, duration, notice, recovery, and operational harm. Compare actual performance with commitments and with a stable baseline. Mark changes in volume, facility hours, customer behavior, or weather that could offer competing explanations.

For a merger or competitive-access proceeding, map current and potential routings, gateway dependencies, switching arrangements, service overlaps, and concentration by lane. Supply Chain Dive noted that parties commenting on the proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger may renew arguments on the merits, illustrating why shippers need evidence tied to specific competitive effects rather than general concern.

Make the evidence operational before it is regulatory

The best evidence program improves daily management even if no filing occurs. Set automated alerts for missed switches, dwell thresholds, ETA changes, invoice mismatches, and recurring accessorials. Review exceptions weekly with operations, procurement, finance, and legal stakeholders. Assign corrective actions and measure whether the same failure returns.

Run a quarterly evidence drill: select one lane and reconstruct 90 days of movements, communications, charges, alternatives, and impacts. If analysts cannot reproduce a metric or trace it to source records, fix the process while the facts are still accessible.

Leadership at the STB will change over time. The value of a complete, consistent, and auditable record does not. Shippers that treat evidence as an operating discipline will be better prepared to negotiate with carriers, challenge charges, explain service failures, and participate credibly when regulatory decisions affect their networks.

Ready to turn rail events, costs, and exceptions into a reliable operating record? Request a CXTMS demo to see how structured transportation data supports faster decisions and defensible analysis.