Rising diesel costs and probably to a lesser extent Green Supply Chain concerns are driving more and more shippers to look for opportunities to move greater volumes of freight with rail carriers.

Anecdotal evidence of that trend is supported by the latest quarterly "Shipper's Survey" by Ed Wolfe and his new company, Wolfe Research.

The graphic below is from the recently released Q2 2008 report. It shows the percent of freight shifted from truckload carriers to rail over the past six months, and vice versa.

As can be seen, the percentage of freight moving from truck to rail over the past two quarterly surveys is much higher than that moving from rail to truckload. With a shift of almost 5% shift from truck to rail in the current survey results, that's substantially more than the 3% or so that went from rail to truck, according to respondents that typically happens over service concerns.

The Q2 results follow the same pattern that was seen in the Q1 survey, as fuel surcharges have pounded truck shippers in 2008.

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