06/26/2026
Railroads are very comfortable with the status quo.
When nothing changes, rates tend to keep moving in the same direction — up. But when a shipper creates credible alternatives, benchmarks its rates, and shows the railroads that business could shift; the power in the negotiation shifts.
Our latest RCC Blog, “Change Is the Enemy of Railroads,” explains why an effective negotiation strategy for significantly reducing rail rates, must be built around creating uncertainty for the railroad — and why that uncertainty improves shippers' negotiation leverage.
The article breaks down how this process works by using actual examples that Escalation Consultants has used to create change which made railroads look at our client's business differently. Change is the enemy of railroads, and in all the examples, this change forced railroads to make more competitive rate decisions.
The blog also highlights why rate benchmarking is always the first step. Before you can negotiate reasonable rates, you need to know what reasonable rates actually are — which markets are you below average, average, above average, or significantly above market.
If your rates keep increasing you need to be in the position to show a railroad that sometimes a reasonable rate change is a rate decrease. The blog Change is the enemy of railroads shows how this is done.
Stop Guessing. Start Negotiating.
Click to read full article:
Escalation Consultants Inc. (EC) has been generating significant cost savings for rail shippers for half a century. What we have found is that things that work without much effort tend to generate smaller cost savings. Strategic negotiation strategies that work to generate large savings tend to foll...
