Category Archives: Supply Chains

It’s interesting how people respond to the need for necessary changes in how oil carrying rail cars are constructed.  My thought: let’s get on with it!  Many of the cars are owned by oil companies, and they should definitely try to protect the public from spills and accidents involving crude.

Oil transportation: Oil industry challenges crude-by-rail rules.

It reminds me a bit of the issues when the ocean carriers decided to sell of their older, more dangerous container chassis for trucks.  Because new rules pinned the liability on them, they decided to try to make others own the chassis.  It backfired a bit, because they really needed the chassis to move their cargoes inland.  So they came up with pools, which diffused the liability somewhat.

Here, the oil companies are trying to resist the upgrading of the oil tank cars because suddenly the public senses a real liability in transporting oil by rail.  They would do better by getting out in front and making every effort to upgrade promptly rather than trying to defer the solutions.

Oil is going to go by train– there’s not sufficient pipeline capacity for it all.  So the cars need to be made safer.