This article has been reprinted from the Dec. 5 USDA Grain Transportation Report.
On November 29, 2019, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) announced a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to modify the sampling procedure for its annual Carload Waybill Sample (CWS).
The CWS is used in a variety of ways that are relevant to agricultural shippers—namely, to support STB’s rate and service cases, as well as agricultural transportation research from many sources.
The CWS is a stratified sample, where different categories of shipments are sampled at different rates to ensure coverage is representative of the true population.
In the NPRM, STB proposes to modify the current sampling rates to improve coverage further.
Comments are due by January 28, 2020.