Responding to pressure to be more transparent about their service performance following the major railroad mergers of the 1990s, the freight railroads began providing shippers and regulators weekly data on metrics such as rail car velocity and terminal dwell times.

But one measure that they haven’t been providing, asserts an executive at one of the country’s largest agribusiness companies, is how well they’ve been performing against the promise of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), an operating methodology adopted by most of the railroads and one that can have a significant effect on first-mile and last-mile delivery for customers.

“As far as a rail shipper is concerned, the game is won or lost in that first-mile, last-mile segment of the supply chain,” said Brad Hildebrand, global lead for rail and barge at Cargill Inc., during a fireside chat Thursday with FreightWaves Senior Staff Reporter Joanna Marsh at FreightWaves Last Mile Logistics Summit. “If that’s not going well, it can have a huge impact on operations.”

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