Pedestrians approach a Union Pacific freight train traveling past Jack London Square, Oakland, California, April 26, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
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The proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is a matter of life and death. Yes, you read that right. Which requires a short digression.
Specifically, in Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump in 2016. Remember when the partisans of both claimed that the election would decide whether the US went the way of Venezuela or not?
Life or death in politics is generally a sham, although it is a device used by politicians and partisans. Elect me or my candidate to “save” the world from all kinds of horrors. It is nonsense and should be treated as such.
However, when it comes to transportation, it is not partisan or sentimental to say that trucks on US roads. they bring with them a number of bodies. Over 5,000 deaths, most of them to innocents who weren’t driving trucks, in 2023 alone.
Keep truck-related deaths in mind as you read about Washington’s ongoing delays to Union Pacific’s proposed merger with Norfolk Southern. Yes, there is a death toll associated with the market’s trucking that the merger is about. This is because the annual body count associated with rail shipments is almost non-existent.
None of this is an unwarranted attack on trucking as a shipping method. The latter is necessary, as evidenced by the fact that over three-quarters of US market goods shipments are transported by truck.
Just the same, and in the dominance of trucking as a mode of shipping, it is easy to see that the would-be combination of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is by no means creating what is impossible to create in a free market: a national railroad monopoly. And it certainly wouldn’t create a shipping monopoly. Check out the aforementioned truck dominance.
What the merger will create is critical information. In particular, how much healthier and more competitive rail networks would be if they could pool their efforts and resources towards more seamless national and eventually international rail networks. Knowledge like this is especially pressing right now.
To understand why, readers need only consider the increase in wealth in the United States at all income levels. As Peggy Noonan observed in a recent column, sometimes we need to see what we’re used to seeing through other people’s eyes.
Noonan was referring to the overwhelming response from visitors to North America, specifically the US, to the World Cup. The consensus was that they are very excited by how well Americans live.
The way this applies to shipments of goods is that as wealth increases, the movement of goods into the United States will increase. Yes, consumption mirrors production and production in the state will continue to soar. Which means progress in freight transportation needs to be made sooner rather than later to not hurt the trucking industry, but to avoid the need for not only more trucks on roads full of passenger vehicles, but much bigger ones.
The proposed combination of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is ultimately an attempt to find out whether the railroads, through fixed transcontinental routes, can take advantage of the increasing amounts of shipments throughout the United States and beyond. The answer to the latter must be discovered simply because if railroads are not the answer, others must be found.
As you read this, there is a movement in Washington to get bigger, heavier, and longer trucks on America’s highways. To say that the Union Pacific/Norfolk Southern delay is tied to these political machinations is hardly an insight. Which is tragic, along with a reminder that politics in Washington sometimes has a multitude of bodies.
