弥合铁路托运人的差距

Strengthening North AmericanFreight Railroad Customer Connections James MillerMichelle Bowling Introduction Oliver Wyman connected with 30+ senior transportation decision makers at North Americanretailers, manufacturers, and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) this year, to determinewhat is influencing their surface transportation mode choices. As an update to our 2020 While every company is different and faces different requirements for its own supply chain,four key themes appear to be resonating across this group, offering important insights into Shippers told us that railroads must demonstrategreater responsiveness, spanningmultiple transaction interactions. Customers want faster, more efficient, more proactivecommunication and action from railroads across pricing, invoicing, claims, local service On the good news front, half of shippers we surveyed said that railroads have becomemore customer-centric since 2019. Shippers want to do more with railroads and expresseda desire forcloser customer relationshipsor even true partnerships, including open-minded consideration of more creative or different commercial structures, more willingness A demand forgreater service reliabilityreflects shippers’ desire for a dependable andconsistent transportation experience — backed up by transparent performance data.Shippers all know the transit performance of their own shipments but see little from Finally,pricinghas been and always will be a high priority. What’s new this year is that weheard many more examples of trucking priced lower in certain lanes than comparable railintermodal services. Since consistent, stable volumes in predictable lanes are of immense Understanding these core shipper preferences is crucial to moving the needle for rail. Whileshippers don’t need rail to be as fast as trucking, they do want better service reliability andperformance overall. And they do need to see the customer-centricity (responsive, efficient, Market Trends There is no doubt that the railroads have been ceding market share to trucking for thepast decade, and that the market share gap is widening — to 22 percentage points in 2024(Exhibit1). Respondents to our 2025 Shipper Survey reported improvements in rail service Freight Segmentation And Mode Share To determine where rail has the most opportunity to gain market share by meeting shipperrequirements,Oliver Wyman segmented North American freight into four categories(Exhibit2). Each segment has shown different growth and rail market share patterns over By far, flexible freight accounts for the largest potential market for rail in terms of ton-milesand is the fastest growing freight segment (Exhibit3). Railroads have only a 19% share offlexible freight and have been slowly losing share in this segment as more shippers opt for If railroads were able to simply able to stop the slide and hold their market share steady forthe next decade, they could recover as much as $171 billion in incremental revenue by 2050,according to our analysis (Exhibit4). This gain would inevitably come from the flexible freight Shipper Mode Choice Preferences About half of the carload shippers we surveyed stated that they wouldpreferto ship byrail rather than truck, while another 30% indicated no preference (Exhibit5). Intermodal These figures suggest a neutral to somewhat favorableview of rail — one that railroadsshould be able to capitalize on if they could deliver a more “truck-like” experience. We heardsimilar sentiments in 2020 — that shippers would like to be doing more with rail but are not Among factors that shippers ranked as influencing their actual mode choice, three stand out:Price was ranked as #1 by nearly half and as a top-three influencer by 85% of respondents(Exhibit6). Shipment management/on-time reliability was ranked as the #1 factor by about a For shippers that reported actively shifting away from rail and to trucking, we asked theirkey reasons for doing so. Half or more cited a lack of responsiveness from rail as a mainreason — which tied with equipment availability for carload shippers (Exhibit7). These The number of intermodal shippers indicating price as a factor highlights an unusual currentmarket situation, where truck prices are lower than intermodal prices in certain lanes. Asdetailed in a recent Oliver Wyman analysis, reasons for this include a surplus of owner- Nearly two-thirds of intermodal shippers surveyed intend to either maintain their currentmode balance or switch to more trucking from rail intermodal in the near future, while overhalf of carload shippers plan to either maintain their mode balance or switch more from Percentage of survey respondents, selecting top three Ramping Up Responsiveness The majority of shippers we surveyed indicated that they want greater responsiveness fromrailroads, meaning communication that is timely, efficient, and proactive across all customer Shippers indicated that more aggressively embracing advanced visibil