The mechanism: No tariff schedule and no White House order sets the price a chemical plant in Louisiana or a grain elevator in Kansas pays to move freight when only one railroad's tracks reach its dock. That's the Surface Transportation Board's job. The STB — a five-member independent agency that regulates rail rates, service, and mergers — controls three levers that determine whether Class I railroads keep pricing power over "captive" shippers who have no practical rail alternative: reciprocal switching (can a captive shipper force access to a competing railroad's line at a nearby interchange), rate-reasonableness review (can a shipper challenge an "unreasonable" rate and win relief), and merger standards (how hard is it to combine two Class I networks). Every one of these levers has moved sharply in the railroads' favor over the past two years, and the STB just reopened the biggest one. On January 9, 2026, the Board published a proposed rule (Docket No. EP 788) to repeal 49 C.F.R. Part 1144 — the very regulation that, since 1985, has made forced reciprocal switching nearly impossible to obtain. Comment and reply periods closed this spring; a final rule is now pending.

Who cashes in:

  • Union Pacific (UNP) — the most concentrated beneficiary. UNP's network includes long stretches of single-railroad-served industry (chemicals along the Gulf Coast, grain in the Midwest) where the absence of a forced-switching remedy is the difference between negotiated pricing and regulated pricing. UNP and its peers already won a major fight in July 2025, when the Seventh Circuit vacated the STB's 2024 "reciprocal switching for inadequate service" rule after UNP and CSX challenged it. Repealing Part 1144 outright would cement that advantage into the underlying regulation itself, not just case law.
  • Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL) — indirect beneficiary. As rail pricing power on captive bulk lanes stays firm, marginal freight (especially LTL-adjacent intermodal-diversion traffic) has less incentive to shift modes, and ODFL's asset-light, non-captive trucking network isn't subject to STB rate jurisdiction at all — it competes on service, not regulated access.
  • XPO (XPO) — similarly insulated. As a trucking/LTL carrier, XPO sits outside STB rate authority entirely, so any tightening of rail pricing discipline on captive shippers doesn't touch its cost structure, while STB-driven friction in rail service can push time-sensitive freight toward truck.