Opinion ID: 351545
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the adequacy of the commission's shortage finding

Text: 37 The Commission's position can be summarized as follows: (1) there are approximately 750,000 carloads of processed food shipped yearly; 27 (2) a single car can make about 15 to 18 trips per year; 28 (3) consequently there is a need for some 40,000 to 50,000 cars suitable for food shipment; (4) only the XF car is suitable for food transportation; (5) therefore, there is a need for some 40,000 to 50,000 XF cars versus a supply of under 3,000 (or of under 35,000 if XP cars are included); 29 hence, (6) the statutory shortage requirement is met. 30 In my judgment, the fourth step of the Commission's analysis cannot be sustained on the record it has made in this proceeding. 38 Initially, it is interesting to note that William K. Smith, GMI's vice-president for transportation and the moving party in these proceedings, stated, contrary to the Commission's conclusion, that GMI uses successfully DF, DFB, and XM cars. 31 To be sure, all of GMI's cars are in assigned service 32 and this may account for its ability to use cars other than those of XF design. This concession only highlights a further difficulty with the Commission's argument, however. Stated precisely, the Commission's proposition four is that the function of XF cars cannot, under present car service rules, be adequately performed by other cars available for the transportation of food shipments. XF Report, supra, 350 ICC at 10 (emphasis added). The italicized phrase in this proposition is critical. As the Commission clearly recognized, existing car service rules allow continual reintroduction of contaminants into class A XM boxcars. Thus it is scarcely surprising that XM cars, regardless of car design, are given to food shippers in less than desirable condition. Indeed, unless XF cars can be assigned to non-contaminating uses, the Commission found that they too would have to be fumigated and decontaminated notwithstanding their white epoxy coating. Id. at 15. This illustrates a key fact about XF cars. They are desirable because they can be assigned to a restricted service in which the primary source of contamination, i. e., grain and related products and other unsanitary bulk commodities, (is) banned   . Id. at 19. 39 The record further suggests that there is nothing inherently unsanitary about the XM car. The problem with these cars arises only after rodents and insects infest their inner walls. All parties agree that such infestation is not present in the car at the beginning of its life, but is caused by introduction of bulk feeds, grains, and similar loose, life-supporting products into the XM car. See XF Report, supra, 350 ICC at 13; ICC Environmental Threshold Assessment Survey, JA 156, 162; comments of GMI, Exhibit 16, at 10, JA 54 (testimony of Mr. Smith). See also br. for the United States at 8. Indeed, it appears that the XP boxcar, which unlike the XF did not initially have an epoxy coating and was therefore substantially identical to an XM car, was successfully used by processed food shippers in assigned service for a number of years prior to creation of the XF designation. See XF Report, supra, 350 ICC at 13; comments of GMI, Exhibit 17, at 4, JA 63; comments of General Foods Corp., JA 146. The success of the XP car as a sanitary vehicle is apparently due not to its intrinsic design, therefore, but only to the fact that its restriction to assigned service prevents introduction, or repeated reintroduction, of contaminating cargoes into the car. 40 The record in this proceeding thus strongly indicates that the scarcity of sanitary cars is due to the absence of a classification for food-quality boxcars of whatever design which would allow their assignment and control in a manner like that established for XF cars by Association of American Railroads Car Service Directive 155. 33 The presence or absence of a white epoxy lining, on the record here, is beside the point. Accordingly, the actual regulatory problem faced by the Commission is a false scarcity of food-quality cars created by car service rules which allow continual reintroduction of contaminants into cars cleaned for food service. 41 There can be no doubt that the Commission recognized the crucial interplay between sanitation and car service rules, for it reversed its initial proposal to put XF cars in general service 34 once it became aware that such use would defeat the whole XF car program. Apparently the Commission, determined to go forward with IPD, never did become aware that the record before it indicated that XM cars could similarly be made suitable for food transportation through reclassification to a restricted service. If it had become aware of this, it might have exercised its undoubted authority 35 to create an assigned service for high quality XM cars. Had it done so, there would likely be no scarcity of sanitary vehicles requiring the corrective powers of IPD. 42 Given this state of facts, I think the Commission has failed to give adequate consideration to all relevant factors and has further stopped short of giving the record the hard look essential to an exercise of informed discretion. Accordingly, I would vacate the rules imposing IPD on XF cars. By this, I do not mean to imply that the Commission must modify car service rules before it can apply IPD. The Commission plainly enjoys discretion to proceed by promulgation of rules, imposition of IPD, or a combination of approaches. It may not, however, impose IPD because a scarcity of a particular type of car has been generated primarily by the very car service rules which the Commission is empowered to change until it has at least considered whether a seemingly simple car service rule modification would alleviate the shortage.