How Much Does It Cost to Ship by Rail? 2026 Costs Per Car and Per Ton-Mile

“How much does it cost to ship by rail?” is the right first question and the hardest one to answer in a single number. Rail pricing isn't a flat per-mile rate like a truckload lane — it's built up from line-haul, fuel surcharge, equipment, and the handling on each end, and the line-haul itself comes off one of two very different pricing tracks. This guide covers what rail freight rates are made of, how railroads build a price from cost, how to estimate your own lane, and where you have room to negotiate.

If you want numbers before theory, start with current rail freight rates by lane: 30 benchmark lanes priced per car, per ton and per ton-mile, refreshed monthly.

How Much Does It Cost to Ship by Rail?

Rail freight costs about 4–5¢ per ton-mile on average, from about 2–4¢ for unit-train bulk to about 8.5¢ for a single car on a published tariff — still one of the cheapest ways to move heavy freight overland. A single carload on our 30-lane benchmark runs $4,900–$15,000 (median $8,400) with fuel surcharge, before any switching or transload fees. Multi-car and contract moves come in lower per car.

A rail freight rate is usually built from:

• Line-haul — the carrier's charge to move the car between points, off a published tariff or a negotiated contract
• Fuel surcharge — a variable add-on tied to the diesel price
• Switching & interchange — moves within a terminal or between railroads
• Transload & accessorials — loading/unloading, storage, demurrage

Rail Cost Per Ton-Mile: The Baseline

The cleanest way to compare freight cost across modes is cost per ton-mile — the cost to move one ton one mile. By that measure, carload rail is one of the cheapest ways to move heavy freight overland.

Two things drive that gap. A single rail car carries the equivalent of three to four truckloads of bulk product, and rail moves a ton on roughly a quarter of the fuel a truck burns per ton-mile. Spread over a long haul, those advantages compound.

One caution: the per-ton-mile average describes the rail move only. It does not include fuel surcharge, transload, drayage, or demurrage. The all-in number on a real lane is higher, and how much higher depends almost entirely on whether your freight is rail-served on both ends. For the comparison against trucking, our rail vs truck shipping cost breakdown works the break-even distance by commodity.

A second caution, and the one that trips up shippers coming from truckload: railroads quote carload freight per car, not per ton-mile. Cents per ton-mile is a derived figure, useful for comparing modes and useless as a quote. Within the load limit, a hopper loaded to 100 tons and the same hopper loaded to 85 tons usually cost the same to move — you're buying the car and its slot in the train, not the tonnage. Convert your volume to cars early and keep your estimate in dollars per car.

What's Actually in a Rail Freight Rate

When a quote comes back higher than the per-ton-mile math suggested, it's because a rail rate is a stack of line items. Here's the stack:

• Line-haul (base rate) — The core charge for moving the car between origin and destination, driven by distance, route, commodity, and equipment. It's stated per car for most bulk, or per ton where loaded weight varies. Railroads price by Standard Transportation Commodity Code (STCC), so the same car on the same lane carries a different base rate loaded with fertilizer than with steel coil.
• Fuel surcharge (FSC) — A separately stated charge that moves with diesel prices, tied to the U.S. Department of Energy weekly diesel index or the AAR fuel index. Each Class I publishes its own program; the fuel surcharge section below covers how it works.
• Transload fees — Without a private siding (most shippers), you transfer freight between truck and rail at a transload facility, often $3–$8 per ton, on whichever ends aren't rail-served. See what transloading is.
• Drayage — Short-haul trucking between your dock and the railhead or transload, typically a few hundred dollars per move.
• Demurrage — If you hold a car past the free time (commonly 24–48 hours), the railroad charges per car per day. It's avoidable, and it can quietly erase rail's savings.
• Equipment / car supply — If you don't own or lease the car, supply and per-diem can factor in, especially for tank or covered hopper cars.
• Accessorials and switching — Switching, weighing, storage, reconsignment, and other lane-specific add-ons, covered below.

The takeaway: the per-ton-mile number tells you whether rail is in the running; the line-item stack tells you what you'll pay. A low base rate with aggressive accessorials can cost more than a higher base with generous free time, so price every item on the same lane and compare all-in to all-in.

Rough Cost by Commodity and Car Type

Different commodities ride in different equipment, and that shapes the cost. Indicative ranges for a single carload on a long-haul lane — for sanity-checking a quote, not for booking:

As a frame of reference, a 100-ton bulk carload moving roughly 1,000 miles often falls in the low-thousands of dollars for line-haul, before fuel surcharge and handling. Lighter or specialized freight that “cubes out” before it hits weight capacity costs more per ton. For the commodity-specific picture, see our guides on shipping grain by rail and steel and metals rail shipping.

Tariffs vs Contracts: The Two Pricing Tracks

Every rail shipment is priced off a published tariff or a negotiated contract. They carry different obligations and very different prices for the same lane, and quoting on the wrong track is one of the most common reasons shippers overpay.

Railroad Tariffs

A tariff is the railroad's published rate schedule. It's public, open to any shipper, and requires no commitment — no minimum volume, no negotiation, no term. If you want to move one car this month and never again, the tariff rate is your price.

The tradeoff is that tariff rates are the railroad's highest prices. They're built for spot or unpredictable traffic, and because the railroad carries all the volume risk, the rate reflects it. Tariffs also come with rigid accessorial terms and few levers: you take the published rate or you don't ship. For a shipper with regular freight, staying on tariff pricing is an expensive habit.

Negotiated Contracts

A rail transportation contract is a private agreement between a shipper and a railroad that sets a confidential rate for a specific commodity, lane, and volume level. Contracts buy a lower rate in exchange for commitments, typically:

• A minimum volume (cars per month or tons per year)
• A term, commonly one to three years
• Lane specificity — the rate applies to one lane or a defined set of lanes

If you ship consistently, even a few cars a month, you should be on a contract. If you can't hit a full minimum, there are structures with lower minimums and somewhat higher rates that still beat the tariff.

Contracts don't have to be negotiated directly with the railroad, either. A rail logistics company that already holds contracted rates can extend them to its customers — often the most practical route to contract-level pricing for a shipper whose own volume wouldn't get the railroad's attention.

How Railroads Set the Price: URCS Costs and R/VC Ratios

Railroads don't set prices by guessing. Every Class I uses a published costing methodology — the Surface Transportation Board's Uniform Railroad Costing System (URCS) — to work out what it costs to move a given car on a given lane, then applies a markup to turn that cost into a rate. Those two steps explain why two carriers quote different numbers on the same lane, and how to tell whether a quote is in the reasonable range.

Step One: URCS Estimates the Variable Cost

URCS is the STB's standard model for what a shipment costs a railroad at the margin. The STB publishes cost coefficients annually, and the model applies them to your shipment's weight, distance, commodity, equipment, and route. The output is a variable cost per car — what the railroad actually spends to move it, before overhead and profit. It groups cost into eight drivers; you don't need to run the math, but knowing what's in it tells you which inputs matter:

1. Gross ton-miles. One ton (freight plus the car's own weight) moved one mile. A 100-ton load in a 30-ton car moved 500 miles is 65,000 gross ton-miles. The largest single driver.
2. Crew. Engineers and conductors, allocated by the shipment's share of the train.
3. Fuel. Locomotive diesel, allocated by consumption, which tracks tonnage and distance.
4. Depreciation. The cost of replacing track, locomotives, and rolling stock, allocated by asset utilization.
5. Casualties and insurance. Loss, damage, and accident costs by historical loss ratio. Hazmat carries more than grain.
6. Maintenance of way. Rail, ties, ballast, and bridges, allocated across all traffic.
7. Maintenance of equipment. Servicing cars and locomotives, varying by car type.
8. General and administrative. Overhead, allocated as a percentage on top of the rest.

Tonnage, distance, and route dominate that list. That's why distance and car count control a rail rate and your company's size and shipping history don't — those affect whether you get a contract, not the cost the rate is built on.

Step Two: The R/VC Ratio Turns Cost Into Price

Variable cost isn't the rate. The railroad has fixed costs and a margin to cover, so it applies a revenue-to-variable-cost (R/VC) ratio to get to the published number. If URCS says a move costs $2,000 and the railroad prices it at 1.5x, the tariff rate is $3,000; the difference covers overhead, network investment, and profit. Three things about R/VC matter to a shipper:

• They vary by commodity. A railroad might run around 1.4x on coal, where there's no truck alternative to compete with, and 1.6x or higher on chemicals, where value and competition are both higher.
• They vary by carrier. Two railroads with the same variable cost can be 10–15 percent apart on price purely through different markups. That's the most common reason two quotes on the same lane don't match.
• They respond to competition. Where two railroads can serve a lane, markups converge downward. Where one railroad owns the only track into your plant, the ratio runs higher — federal law sets 180 percent R/VC as the floor below which a rate can't even be challenged at the STB, which tells you how wide the range gets.

The practical takeaway: a published rate should be roughly proportional to the cost of moving your freight, adjusted for how much competition the railroad faces on the lane. Our free rail freight quote tool works that in reverse — it applies URCS-derived costing to your lane and returns an indicative estimate to hold a carrier quote against. If the quote sits far above that line, the gap is markup, and markup is what you negotiate.

What Moves Your Rate Up or Down

Two shippers moving the same commodity the same distance can pay very different rates. What separates them:

Want a number for your specific lane? Our free rail-rate estimator returns an indicative estimate in seconds — just enter your email. It's an estimate based on URCS-derived costing, not a guaranteed rate.

Pricing a specific lane? Get an indicative carload rate in 60 seconds — origin, destination, commodity and your email. It is an estimate to plan with, not a rate.

Distance Is Not Linear, and There Is a Floor

Rail rate curves are steeply concave. The cost of the first couple hundred miles — crew, switching, yard time, terminal handling at both ends — is largely fixed and gets incurred whether the car goes 150 miles or 1,500. Stretch the haul and that fixed block spreads across more miles, so the effective per-mile rate drops fast and then flattens. Two consequences:

• Short lanes look expensive per mile, and often are. Below a few hundred miles, a carload move competes with a truck that does the same job door to door with no terminal handling. Rail rate structures carry effective minimums per move, so a 90-mile move may price close to a 200-mile move. If a short-lane estimate comes out suspiciously cheap, you've applied a per-mile figure below the floor.
• Long lanes are where rail's advantage compounds. The same fixed terminal cost is doing far more work at 1,800 miles than at 300, which is why a lane that fails a rail evaluation at 400 miles can pass comfortably at 1,400.

Treat any per-ton-mile benchmark as a long-haul average: on a short lane it underprices the move. Rail's door-to-door cycle is also longer and more variable than truck's, and the inventory sitting in transit is a carrying cost that belongs in your comparison even though it never appears on a rate sheet. See rail freight transit times for where the time goes.

How Many Railroads Touch the Car

The route matters as much as the mileage, because every carrier boundary is a place where revenue has to be divided and where the car can sit.

A single-line move — one railroad from origin to destination — is the cleanest and usually the cheapest structure on a lane. Add an interchange and two carriers split one rate, each with its own cost floor to cover. Add a short line on each end, common for plants that aren't on a Class I main, and three or four participants are in a move that still shows up as one number on one bill of lading.

Sometimes it doesn't show up as one number. Under a Rule 11 arrangement, each carrier bills its own segment and you assemble the total yourself. Shippers estimating a fragmented route frequently price the Class I line-haul, forget the short-line segments, and end up 20–30 percent light. The first-mile and last-mile carriers are short in miles and not short in dollars.

Carrier mix also tells you your leverage. If exactly one railroad can reach your facility and one reaches your customer, your negotiating position is what it is. If a second carrier can reach your plant through a switching district, or the destination has a competing route, the pricing conversation changes materially. Check before you accept a first number — reciprocal switching and rate negotiations walks through how to find out.

Private Cars vs Railroad-Supplied Cars: The Rate Impact

Who owns the equipment is one of the biggest variables in a rail rate, and it surprises first-time shippers.

With railroad-supplied equipment, the railroad builds its ownership cost into your rate. You're renting the car along with the move, so the rate is higher, but you need no capital and carry no utilization risk.

With private cars — owned or leased by you, or supplied by a trading partner — the railroad pays a mileage allowance for the use of your equipment, or publishes a separate, lower private-car rate. Either way the net cost per car comes down, sometimes materially, provided the equipment is well utilized.

That proviso does the work. A shipper running 30 covered hoppers on a tight, predictable cycle can recover equipment cost quickly. A shipper with erratic volume or long dwell may find private cars more expensive than the rate sheet suggests, because a leased car costs the same per month whether it moves four times or once. Model it before committing: monthly lease rate divided by expected turns, added to the per-car rate, plus repositioning of empties. The rate improvement is real, but it has to pencil out against utilization.

Fuel Surcharges: How They Work on Rail

The fuel surcharge (FSC) is a separate line on top of the line-haul rate, and it's why a rate quoted in one month doesn't reproduce a few months later. Class I railroads publish their surcharge programs in public tariffs and reset them monthly against a diesel index, typically the U.S. Department of Energy weekly on-highway diesel price. The reset is applied on a lag, so this month's surcharge reflects a prior period's fuel price — a diesel spike doesn't hit your invoice instantly, but a sustained increase catches up.

Two program structures dominate, and they behave differently on your lane:

• Mileage-based: cents per car-mile, stepping up as the diesel index climbs. It scales with distance, so long hauls carry proportionally more.
• Percentage-based: a percentage of the line-haul rate once the index exceeds a base threshold. A 10–15 percent surcharge on a $2,500 base adds $250–$375 per car.

Before you budget:

• The formula varies by railroad. Review the table that applies to your traffic before you sign anything.
• Contracts can cap exposure. A maximum surcharge percentage or a higher trigger threshold is a legitimate ask on a multi-year deal.
• Low diesel doesn't always mean zero. Most programs have a floor below which no surcharge applies, but some still charge a small amount at low prices. Read the terms.
• Never budget off one month. Pull the last 12 months of the applicable program, plan on the average, and use the high month as your downside case.

Our guide to how rail fuel surcharges are calculated shows how to read the published tables, and the fuel surcharge tool tracks current carrier programs.

Accessorial Charges to Watch

Accessorials are the charges layered on top of the line-haul for anything beyond the basic haul. Some are avoidable with planning; others are a normal cost of doing business. Understand all of them before you accept a quote, because they are where a “cheap” rate turns expensive.

• Switching fees. Charged when the railroad moves your car between tracks within a terminal, or to and from a private siding. Ask up front whether your origin and destination need it.
• Demurrage. The daily charge for holding a car past free time at origin or destination, commonly 24–48 hours, then escalating per car per day. It is self-inflicted and predictable: if your crew realistically needs four days and the tariff gives you two, that gap is a recurring cost, not an exception. The demurrage guide and demurrage calculator put a number on it.
• Storage. A separate charge when a car sits beyond a set period, often on a different clock than demurrage. Know the difference at every location.
• Car hire. When a car from one railroad's fleet runs on another's track, the owner collects an hourly or mileage-based hire charge. Usually settled between railroads, but it shapes the all-in rate on interchange lanes.
• Reconsignment and diversion. Changing a car's destination after it's billed carries a fee, sometimes high enough that letting the car arrive and rerouting from there is cheaper.
• Transload and drayage. Not railroad accessorials, but they hit the same budget line on any end that isn't rail-served. The transload directory lists terminals where freight transfers between truck and rail.

When you evaluate a quote, ask for the complete accessorial tariff for your lanes, and don't assume accessorials are minimal until you've verified both facilities.

How to Estimate Your Rail Cost

You can get to a defensible ballpark with five inputs: origin, destination, commodity, number of cars, and equipment type. Here's the sequence we use:

• Fix the unit. Cars per shipment, shipments per month, tons per car. The annual car count decides which pricing track you can ask for.
• Establish the rail route, not the road route. Rail mileage isn't highway mileage. Identify the origin-serving railroad, the destination-serving railroad, and anyone in between.
• Line-haul: ton-miles × a 4–9 cent benchmark (tons × miles × $0.04 to $0.09; the low end for multi-car bulk on long single-railroad lanes, the high end for a single car), remembering the floor on short lanes. A published tariff item, a rate you've paid on a comparable lane, or an indicative estimate is a better anchor. Convert everything to dollars per car.
• Add fuel surcharge using the applicable program and a 12-month average, not the current month.
• Add equipment cost if you supply or lease the cars — monthly lease divided by turns, plus repositioning of empties.
• Add the ends: transload (~$3–$8/ton) and drayage on any end that isn't rail-served, extra switching, and a demurrage allowance based on your actual dwell, not your target.
• Compare all-in to all-in against your truck alternative, including the inventory carrying cost of the longer cycle.

Do that on paper and you'll have a number you can defend and a list of the three or four assumptions that control it — which is where you push when you go to market. The faster path is the rail-rate estimator: plug in the lane and it returns an indicative carload estimate you can price truck quotes against. Or reach out and we'll discuss your shipment against published tariffs and current market. Steel Wheel does not guarantee rates; the estimator and any verbal number are indicative until the move is booked.

A Worked Example

Say you're moving 100 tons of grain about 1,000 miles, origin and destination both rail-served:

• Line-haul: 100 tons × 1,000 miles × $0.03 = ~$3,000 for the car.
• Fuel surcharge: a percentage on top, varying with diesel — at 12 percent, another $360.
• Handling: minimal here, since both ends are rail-served.

By truck, that same 100 tons is four to five loads at several thousand dollars each — a meaningfully higher all-in cost on a lane that long. Now change one variable: if the destination isn't rail-served, add transload (~$3–$8/ton, so $300–$800 on 100 tons) plus drayage, and the gap narrows. Shorten the haul to 250 miles and the handling can swallow the savings entirely. That's why a per-lane estimate beats a rule of thumb.

Three Ways an Estimate Goes Wrong

1. Wrong mode

If your shipment fits legally on a truck — roughly 25 tons, standard dimensions, no permits — rail is often the more expensive answer regardless of distance, because you're paying for a full car plus terminal handling to move a load one driver could take door to door. Rail wins on bulk volume, on freight too heavy or too large for the highway, and on sustained lane density. When a rail estimate comes back at double the truck cost, the usual explanation isn't a bad rate; it's a load that shouldn't be on a railcar. Our post on evaluating whether rail makes sense works through the threshold.

2. Wrong unit

Multiplying a per-car rate by tons, or dividing an annual budget by shipments instead of cars, produces errors of several hundred percent. When a rail number feels wildly off, check the unit before you check the rate.

3. Wrong endpoint

The rail network doesn't serve every address. A “destination” that's really a city name can resolve to a terminal well outside the metro, with a truck leg from there. If your estimate assumes rail delivers to the door and it actually delivers 40 miles away, the missing dray can swamp the savings. Confirm the actual rail-served facility at both ends before you trust any number.

How to Negotiate Better Rail Freight Rates

Rail rate negotiation isn't like buying truck capacity. You're talking to the one or two railroads that serve your lanes, not bidding a dozen carriers in a routing guide, and the relationship matters as much as the data. Still, there are concrete ways to improve your position.

Know your volume precisely

Bring a 12-month shipment history by origin, destination, commodity, and car type. Vague estimates invite conservative proposals; hard data forces the railroad to price what you're actually offering.

Know your truck alternative

The railroad's rate ceiling is roughly what trucking would cost you on the same lane. Your current truck rates are the benchmark rail has to beat, and they signal that you have options. Our rail vs truck cost comparison walks through the analysis.

Concentrate your volume and commit strategically

If you ship several commodities across multiple lanes, bundle them into one contract with one railroad; aggregated volume buys more leverage than the same total spread across small contracts. A credible, enforceable minimum is what the railroad wants most and gets you the lowest rate — but shortfall charges wipe out savings, so commit only to what you can reliably deliver. Contract length is the same trade: a three-year term earns a concession over a one-year deal, but only if your forecast holds.

Negotiate the escalator, not just year one

Multi-year contracts carry annual rate escalation, often index-linked, and it compounds. Negotiate the formula and the cap, not just the first-year rate. The same goes for the fuel surcharge formula: on high-volume contracts, a higher trigger threshold or a cap is negotiable.

Consider working through a rail logistics company

If your volume isn't large enough to get the railroad's attention, or you don't know what benchmarks to negotiate against, working through a rail logistics company is often the most practical option. Steel Wheel works against published Class I tariffs and short-line rates, knows what's achievable on specific lanes, and can extend contracted pricing you'd struggle to reach alone. New to rail? Start with our guide to how rail freight works, or take the free Railroad Pricing course.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to ship by rail?

Rail freight averages roughly 4 to 5 cents per ton-mile across U.S. Class I traffic. Unit-train bulk runs about 2 to 4 cents, while a single car on a published tariff runs higher: a 30-lane benchmark in October 2026 came out at $4,900 to $15,000 per car, median $8,400, or about 8.5 cents per ton-mile including fuel surcharge.rail-rate estimator.

What is the cost of rail freight per ton-mile?

Across all U.S. Class I traffic, rail averages roughly 4 to 5 cents per ton-mile (the U.S. DOT reported 4.4 cents for 2020), versus roughly 8 to 20 cents per ton-mile for truck. Unit-train bulk runs lower, about 2 to 4 cents, and single-car tariff moves run higher, about 8.5 cents at the median of a 30-lane 2026 benchmark. That headline number excludes fuel surcharge, transload fees, drayage, and demurrage, so the all-in figure on a real lane is higher. To compute your own cost per ton-mile, divide the all-in invoice total by tons moved multiplied by miles traveled.

What goes into a rail freight rate?

A rail rate is built from several line items: the line-haul charge (distance, commodity, and equipment), a fuel surcharge tied to the U.S. Department of Energy diesel index or the AAR fuel index, accessorials and switching charges, demurrage if you hold cars past free time, and — for shippers without a private siding — transload fees and drayage to and from a rail-served terminal. Railcar supply or per-diem can also factor in when you don't own or lease the equipment.

What is the difference between a railroad tariff and a contract?

A tariff is the railroad's published rate schedule: public, open to any shipper, no volume commitment, and the railroad's highest price because it carries all the volume risk. A contract is a confidential, negotiated agreement that sets a lower rate for a specific commodity and lane in exchange for a minimum volume and a term, commonly one to three years. Shippers with regular freight should be on a contract, directly or through a rail logistics company that already holds contracted rates.

What is URCS and what does the R/VC ratio mean?

URCS is the Surface Transportation Board's Uniform Railroad Costing System, the standard model railroads use to estimate the variable cost of moving a car from its weight, distance, commodity, equipment, and route. R/VC is the revenue-to-variable-cost ratio, the markup applied to that cost to set a rate: a $2,000 variable cost at 1.5x R/VC becomes a $3,000 rate. R/VC varies by commodity, by carrier, and by competition on the lane, which is the main reason two railroads quote different numbers on the same move.

How is the rail fuel surcharge calculated?

Each Class I railroad publishes its own fuel surcharge program and resets it monthly against a diesel index, typically the U.S. Department of Energy weekly on-highway diesel price, applied on a lag. Programs are either mileage-based (cents per car-mile) or percentage-based (a percentage of the line-haul rate once diesel exceeds a threshold). A 10 to 15 percent surcharge on a $2,500 base adds $250 to $375 per car. Budget off a 12-month average of the program, not a single month.

Do private railcars get a lower rate?

Usually, yes. When the railroad supplies the car, its ownership cost is built into your rate. When you ship in cars you own or lease, the railroad pays a mileage allowance or publishes a separate, lower private-car rate, so the net cost per car comes down. Whether that saves money overall depends on utilization: a leased car costs the same per month whether it turns four times or once, so tight, predictable cycles benefit and erratic volume or long dwell can cost more.

Does the weight of my freight change the rail rate?

Usually not, within the load limit of the car. Carload freight is priced per car, so a hopper loaded to 100 tons and the same hopper loaded to 85 tons generally cost the same to move. That makes underloading expensive: if your product runs out of space before it runs out of weight allowance, the fix is a different car type, not a different rate. Some commodities are priced per ton, in which case loaded weight does drive the invoice.

Why are rail shipping rates cheaper than truck on long hauls?

A single rail car carries the equivalent of three to four truckloads of bulk product, and rail uses roughly a quarter of the fuel per ton-mile that truck does. Those two facts compound over distance, so the per-ton cost of a long carload move falls well below a truck rate. The advantage grows with distance and shrinks on short hauls where drayage and transload eat the savings. See our rail vs truck cost comparison for the break-even math.

How do I estimate rail freight cost for my shipment?

Start with origin, destination, commodity, number of cars, and equipment type. Multiply ton-miles by a 4 to 9 cent-per-ton-mile benchmark for a rough rail cost, then add fuel surcharge (use a 12-month average), equipment cost if you supply the cars, and any transload and drayage. For a faster, lane-specific number, use the rail-rate estimator, which returns an indicative estimate based on URCS-derived costing. It is an estimate, not a guaranteed rate.

What makes rail freight rates go up or down?

Distance and car count set the base. From there, rates move with commodity (hazmat and specialized equipment cost more), volume (contract and unit-train rates run well below single-car tariff), lane density and how many railroads touch the car (single-line moves price better than interchange moves), who supplies the car, diesel-driven fuel surcharges, and how much transload and drayage your origin and destination require. Consistent, repeating volume on a dense lane is the cheapest profile.

Does Steel Wheel Logistics guarantee rail rates?

No. Steel Wheel Logistics is a rail logistics company with an indicative rate estimator at steelwheellogistics.com/tools/rail-rate-quote. The estimator returns an indicative estimate based on URCS-derived costing; actual rates depend on equipment, commodity, market conditions, and routing. To firm up a number, contact us to discuss your shipment.