Who owns the most revenue rail cars now? Do the railroad companies own the most cars,or do the rail car lessors own the most cars? I see a lot of cars of all types with “X” as the last letter in their reporting marks. Any ideas?
At one point about 20 years ago GE owned the single largest group of rail cars. At that time more that half of the rail car fleet was owned by non railroad entities. I haven’t seen any recent statistics. Remember not all lease cars have an X in the reporting marks. Many cars are leased to the railroads and carry the railroads reporting marks.
I would argue that this is akin to an individual leasing an automobile - it’s still “your” car.
There was a time when the railroads owned the vast majority of railcars. Is the number of “X” cars seen these days an indication that railroads are slowly getting out of the car ownership business?
Argue all you want the fact is you don’t OWN the car which was the question. The stewardship of the car is recognized by it carrying the railroads reporting marks.
Currently, about 35-40% of the freight cars are railroad controlled. The rest are non-railroad controlled. These are cars owned by shippers, leased by shippers, or simply private cars available for shipper use.
If you want more specifics, NS and BNSF both have about 80,000 rail cars, with UP and CSX not far behind.
On the private side, TTX has about 200,000 cars with GE having about 140,000 and CIT and GATX with about 100,000 each. Union Tank Car and Trinity car each have about 70,000 cars. These are all companies that lease cars and the numbers keep changing as they buy and sell entire fleets or series of cars. Actual shippers have a maximum of less than 20,000 cars, but there are lots of these cars.
While UMLER has all the facts, it would be nice to look through PER (Printed Equipment Register) and look at the statistical totals for each owner.
Not sure how to classify TTX as its railroad owned but that’s really a minor point.
Which is the point I was trying to make. Overall included in his question:
To which you replied:
This leaves a gray area in which the cars are lettered for a railroad, but technically belong to a lessor (like your leased automobile, which is registered in your name). For the purposes of the original question, I would say these cars “belong” to the railroads.
Bartman laid it out nicely.
But the original question was who OWNS the most cars, your responses ignore that question!
Balt, ask and ye shall receive: This is from the April 2016 Official Railway Equipment Register:
BNSF: 79686 cars.
CN: 30717 cars + 1138 (B&LE), 556 (CC), 2928 (GTW), 4572 (IC), 55 (WLO), 5623 (WC), 29 (WCCL), 376 (SSAM), 184 (AC)
(For some reason, these companies are all listed separately yet…grand total, 46178 cars)
CP: 19797 cars, plus 11061 SOO = 30858 cars.
CSXT: 60102 cars
KCS: 10764 cars, plus 6364 KCSM = 17128 cars.
NS: 70888 cars.
UP: 71944 cars.
Now, for the major private owners (of which General Electric is no longer one):
American Railcar Industries/American Railcar Leasing: 38121 cars.
The Andersons: 18524 cars.
Chicago Freight Car Leasing Co.: 10562 cars.
The CIT Group/Capital Finance, Inc.: 89290 cars.
GATX Rail Canada Corporation: 4593 cars.