Single Wagonload

Current situation

Single Wagonload has been under constant pressure during the last 2 decades and has lost significant market share to road and other rail freight transport modes despite the growing transport market.

Many players have significantly downsized their networks or even dropped out of the market. As a consequence, transport volumes for the remaining Wagonload providers further reduced significantly.

Challenges

  • Strong competitive pressure from highly innovative (Gigaliner, autonomous driving, etc), low-cost truck business, taking up to 90 % market share in Full Truck Load (FTL) market
  • Missing level playing field with road due to strong technical and regulatory requirements, e.g. multiple ETCS systems
  • Increased intra-modal competition from combined traffic and block trains, following the deregulation of the rail freight market
  • Challenging framework for rail freight e.g. due to infrastructure bottlenecks, priority of passenger traffic, increasing track access charges, construction works etc. despite modal shift ambitions of the European Commission
  • Remaining gaps in competitiveness e.g. regarding reliability, transparency, seamless offer, interoperability, flexibility and speed of innovation compared to road