WASHINGTON – The Surface Transportation Board today issued a decision partially granting complaints filed by the North America Freight Car Association and several other associations and individual shippers regarding Union Pacific’s charges for the movement of empty, privately owned tank cars to repair facilities.
The decision clarifies UP’s obligations regarding charges moving forward and directs UP not to charge for moving private tank cars to and from repair shops unless it can demonstrate that car providers are reimbursed for those expenses.
The board’s decision denied all other aspects of the complaints, which were filed in 2015.
UP says it’s continuing to study the decision and its potential implications. “The STB correctly concluded that Union Pacific acted lawfully in charging for empty repair moves of tank cars and moving privately supplied tank cars under zero-mileage rates,” railroad spokeswoman Robynn Tysver said.
Historically, railroads have been required to furnish the rail cars necessary to provide their rail service. Tank cars, however, are almost entirely privately owned. On Jan. 1, 2015, UP adopted an empty repair move charge for privately owned tank cars.
On March 31, 2015, NAFCA filed a complaint with the board, alleging that UP had engaged in an unreasonable practice and violated its common carrier obligation by failing to pay them for UP’s use of their tank cars when providing rail service and by imposing the January 2015 charge for moving their tank cars when empty to repair facilities. Several associations and individual complainants later filed similar complaints that were embraced into the docket.
In its decision, the board concluded that there is no basis to hold that UP acted unlawfully in how it compensated the complainants for its use of their tank cars, and that the empty repair move charge adopted by UP in 2015 is not unlawful or an unreasonable practice.
The decision further finds that the complainants are not entitled to reparations for the payment of past empty repair move charges, as they did not use the methods available to them to seek compensation for the empty repair move costs imposed by UP. The decision also finds that, in the future, the burden will be on UP to demonstrate that it is adequately compensating car providers if it chooses to continue to impose empty repair move charges.
“I am pleased to have brought closure to this proceeding that has been pending before the Board for almost a decade,” STB Chairman Robert E. Primus said in a statement. “Our stakeholders deserve timely adjudication and I regret the extraordinary amount of time it was with the Board. However, this was an extremely difficult and complex matter and I applaud the Board for bringing about a fair and reasonable solution that I believe provides administrative certainty moving forward.”
Board members Karen Hedlund and Michelle Schultz commented with separate expressions. Board member Patrick Fuchs concurred in part, and dissented in part, with a separate expression.
