Rob Liss is Vice President at MAKA Logistics, one of the largest independent agencies in Armstrong Transport Group. He explains why a proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger could shift freight from trucks to rail and reshape competition across North America, and more.<br><br>This week&#x27;s episode is sponsored by Epay Manager, Augment Technologies Inc, Goodship.<br>Interested in sponsoring our podcast? Send us an email at pbj@freightcaviar.com.

The Deal That Could Take Freight Off the Highway

The FreightCaviar Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The FreightCaviar Podcast

## Participants

- **Paul** (None)
- **Rob Liss** (MAKA Logistics)

## Transcript

Truck Driving is not going to be a job in 20 years like it is now. I mean, we used to have like, what, 140 class one railroads. Now we're down to six. If you look at all the West Coast ports, if you look at all the East Coast ports of the U.S., you can really build a superhighway that runs international container traffic all the way through. The biggest opportunity is fraud. So if you had the load stolen, dull brokering, all those things, I guarantee you it was not done with an intermodal carrier.

So there's two things that need to happen for a railroad class one merger to happen? Yeah. So when the merger comes in, like there's two criteria that the Service Transportation Board looks at. So it's a regulatory board. The federal government has broad regulation over interstate commerce, and that matters in a few ways. So I think yesterday Secretary Duffy came out and was talking about cutting funding to New York State for $70 million. And it's sort of this nuclear option because

they can cut funding to the state, but states themselves issue CDLs. So there's states rights, states can control commerce within their own borders. As soon as it crosses borders, now it's an interstate rule. So the Interstate Commerce Commission, when you talk about deregulation in the industry, it started with the railroads, then went to trucking shortly thereafter. The ICC basically recommended that itself be disbanded. But before that, they were the governing

party that said, hey, you can move, you know, the example in the freight magazine is toothpicks from, you know, Maine to wherever. Like they were the governing party that did a lot of that stuff. It still exists in certain instances, but the Service Transportation Board is kind of the, not quite a successor entity, but that's the federal government's oversight division of, you know, hey, there's problems with the rail. Railroads have, they're common carriers. So

like the, there's three kinds of, and these definitions themselves are changing, but in general, there's three kinds of motor carriers. You have common carriers, contract carriers, and private fleets. So private fleets would be like your Walmart fleet, even that a lot of those are actually set up legally as contract carriers. They can haul freight for other parties. Majority, that's where the carriers that you're working with as a freight broker are going to be contract carriers. That's why that rate confirmation that you're sending, that's the contract,

right? So that's like lays out the terms and conditions. It's an, like, that's how you would kind of work backwards from that. The third is common carriers. So that would be LTL companies. So like UPS, FedEx, SIA to a certain extent, like, like when you're a common carrier, that means that UPS can't refuse somebody business. Like they have to give the same, they h...

The Deal That Could Take Freight Off the Highway

Transcript

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Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
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The Deal That Could Take Freight Off the Highway

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.