Freight Railroads Face Antitrust Wave After Class Action (1)

The country’s top freight railroads were hit with more than two dozen lawsuits alleging a nationwide conspiracy to rig fuel surcharge rates.

The 25 complaints, filed by individual shippers in multiple courts, target BNSF Railway Co., CSX Transportation Inc., Norfolk Southern Railway Co., and Union Pacific Railway Co., which together control about 90% of the freight rail industry.

The suits accuse the railroads of a scheme to jack up the rates of fuel surcharges, or “FSCs,” beginning in 2003. Each of them had previously tried to raise the surcharges on its own, but those efforts failed because ...