A Burlington Northern locomotive (text of audio follows photo)
Photo: Peter Costantini

Narrator

On the dry side of the shipping business, U.S. railroads have taken an increasing share of the container trade from the trucking companies which used to dominate it. Double-stack rail cars now carry twice as many containers on the same size train, and computers have made it possible to track container movements with precision and coordinate their flows.

Bob Middleton of the Port of Oakland:

Bob Middleton

What has happened in the last 20 years is not only the widespread adoption of the container hardware by merchant fleets around the world, but further, especially in North America, the development of overland rail, complementary overland rail systems to move the boxes around. The U.S. railroads and the Canadian railroads have invested a lot of money and have gotten increasingly good at this.

Since the early 80s, the railroads began to recognize that there were some things happening with computers that they could exploit to their advantage, that the high-value nature of containerized traffic meant that they could charge pretty good rates for it and make money.

We have in western America now two very strong, financially healthy railroads as a result of acquisitions and mergers. So that means that from the West Coast into the Midwest and in the Southeast you now have integrated route networks. At a time when the technology gets cheaper and more efficient all the time.

What I mean by that is cargo tracking. That's what drives merchandisers crazy: they want to know where their stuff is. You call in, you punch in, and give them the number of your computer and it tells you, well, this is where it is. It's three days out of Los Angeles, and it will be discharged, it will be off the ship and in port in this many hours.

Narrator

Transport economist Warren Crowther:

Warren Crowther

I'm advising the railroads down here in Guatemala and Costa Rica, and I keep track of all that, because I know what happens up there determines pretty much what you should do down here. So I follow all those players. It's really been a circus. These near-marriages and divorces and everything like that, it would put most of your X-rated movies to shame. It's a very dynamic situation--it would be a great soap opera.

Narration and interviews by Peter Costantini