Latest / Talk Track by Telegraph / Q3 2026 Freight Rail Forecast: Carload, Intermodal, + Bid Season Pricing

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Q3 2026 Freight Rail Forecast: Carload, Intermodal, + Bid Season Pricing · Talk Track by Telegraph

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to another episode of TalkTrack.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Telegraph podcast where we talk about and respond to the news of the day that we think will be of interest to the railroading community.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And as always, by that we mean really everyone the people who ship things on the railroads, the people who operate the railroads, the people who service the railroads.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I'm here with Telegraph co-founder and CEO Harris Liggan.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Harris, excited to get into it.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's gonna be another, another fun episode.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've got a couple of things stacked up for this one.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um really, I think, you know, we it's hard for us to do one of these without talking about the merger.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We we seem to try every week, but we're always gifted with uh with with more uh opportunity.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so David, when um when I read the latest announcement from the STB, I I got the sense that it seems like things are moving forward.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we kind of have a timeline, we can see some point in the horizon that we're running towards.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: What what was your read on the on the latest from the STB?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm excited to get your take because I think you and I have different perspectives on it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still a little bit sort of cold water, I guess, on the news of this.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a calendar, you know.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was excited to see when the public hearings will happen, like when the congressional hearings and in the and that's spring of next year, so that's like something to look forward to.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's some dates in there for people who want to be on record um as responding to this.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, for anyone listening who didn't know that, but those dates are there, people can can file their thoughts.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately that one is coming up quickly.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's in September.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So people who want to to you know file, and you know, it's a virtue of our system that they can.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a a great deadline to know.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Really, the more interesting thing to me, if I were trying to read the tea leaves on where this goes, is not so much that there is a calendar that's important, but you know, we're still, I think the major development was the Supreme Court slaughter decision, which really changes what independent boards can do in relation to the wishes of the administration.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we saw recently that the FCC has been dealing with that and some of the actions they've taken, and and members of the board of the FCC having some misgivings about that.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: To my mind, that all bears more heavily on the outcome of this merger.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do independent boards make independent decisions in 2026 and 2027 or not?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: The timeline is just sort of sets the stage for that to play out, I think.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And typically with these with these things, the longer time horizon you have, the more influence maybe that decision could have, or there could be other things that might affect the trajectory.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which my read on it was it feels like the STB kind of shut down some of the quick, snappy decisions that uh the the applicants were hoping for.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I I think we all know like time kills all deals, and and unfortunately, this one has a fairly long time cycle to actually bake in the oven a little bit.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That that is a really good point.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you UPNS were not happy to see this thing, you know, with that kind of timeline.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, on the on the other side, I mean, I think uh I think our friends at Railroad Weekly said it well that the the basically the plea from the opponents of the merger was kill it, kill it now.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they appealed to the STB to say don't even start this calendar, stop this now because it doesn't stand.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously they weren't successful, so I think it cuts the other way too, that we have a timeline for a full case certainly disappoints the opponents of the merger.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I but I I appreciate that we have something of a time horizon now because when it was held in advance, it was just like pressing pause on the video game, and maybe we'll we'll come back to it at some point, right?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I I think that's enough merger talk for us now.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because guess what?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like we're gonna get at least another year of it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, we're gonna come there.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um we don't normally talk about it uh on this podcast or really ever.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Telegraph made the news quite a bit this week.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we was really surprised uh to see a lot of a lot of the things coming up, and I and I I say surprised, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I obviously knew what was going on in the background, but I can at least act surprised here.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um the first thing that came out was a long, long-standing kind of partnership in the background, but our first public announcement with Railpulse.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dave, you've written a couple of blogs on Telematics.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I what was your kind of your your big takeaway from finally seeing the names of RailPulse and Telegraph and the lights together?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I mean I I was excited to see it because obviously, like you said, you and I kind of know how those things work, but we're inside baseball, if you will, and and most people aren't that inside of it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So putting it out in the world that this partnership exists and there's collaboration and communication, I I thought was exciting.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: How about you?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the you know, going from the inception of the company to that, that's gotta feel like kind of an exciting milestone.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the the fun thing about it was RailPulse and Telegraph actually kind of started around the same time.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been on uh a s a journey somewhat together and at various points have kind of crossed over, which is which has been great.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our view is all has always been net positive on telematics in the industry.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: If RailPulse is is the standard or is the consortium or is the majority of kind of how folks are ingesting that data, we want to bring that in and accelerate the adoption and and and and fundamentally the value that folks are getting out of telematics, which you and I have editorialized plenty over the years, I just want more people to have access to that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we can help to that mission, awesome.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we we are happy to raise our hands for that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: The the second thing is if we can help alleviate some of the concern or questions or maybe hesitancy that folks may have either about equipping their own rail assets, supporting the equipment, uh the equipping of rail assets, or you making use of the data in a single unified kind of workflow, happy to kind of accelerate that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I was I candidly, we should have done it sooner.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The the other interesting thing was you were published in Railway Age with a very like good ode uh to a a local hockey player in the Washington area.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like d tell us more about this act trick thesis that you had.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, yeah, yeah.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh anyone who who watches this may already subscribe to Railroad Age.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a you know daily read for me.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot in there, so I was really honored that they included my thoughts, um uh, you know, recent thoughts on this.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, the idea is that well, well, to go back to the the origin of the notion, um, as part of our upcoming market consist report that we're gonna talk about, one of the inputs to that was just listening to all the earnings calls for Q2.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, with the mission of distilling that for the readers of the consist and you know to listeners of this podcast.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, one of the things that I struck me as I listened to that was, you know, Q2 was a great quarter.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: People probably already know that and they can read our take on it in the consist.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but what what made it great?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, if you, you know, on an earnlings call, what a railroad is going to say is, well, it's our people and it's our decisions that led up to this point, which not even to say that's wrong, but I thought that story was incomplete.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was incomplete in the sense that there were three major policy actions that really contributed to a super strong Q2 in 2026.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Strong, I mean, in terms of railroad volumes.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then if people who don't watch hockey might not know that hat trick is the term for three goals, so it was a convenient name to give a three-part argument.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um Railroad Age ran with it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's great to see your your hockey knowledge coming to the forefront of this discussion.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um a hat trick obviously implies threes.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're a big Boston guy, so you know gone are the days of the of the Beruins having like the you know Zedano Chara and all the data still together.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You obviously reference it, referenced Ovi and that that was that was a cool Odam.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, you were really thinking through some of those some of those policy items as basically precursors, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so those policy actions did not take place like yesterday or even a few months ago, right?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those things had to be in place prior to that to then generate the outcome, which you've now summarized for for our readers.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um tell us a little bit more about those pieces, and and obviously these are things that are now in the market concepts.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: We'll love to kind of run through the those three points.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, gosh, I'll I'll do them um, you know, there's three of them, and I'll maybe do them in order of um increasing complexity, I guess, or maybe increasing surprise to me.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the first one, I don't think we're breaking any ground here because the trade press has been covering this, and and people who in this world probably know there was a pretty big crackdown on truck drivers by this administration in the last 12 months or more.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And by crackdown, that really means a lot of drivers were taken off the road and a lot of um truck driving schools were closed.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: We had the exact numbers in the report.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's a lot to talk about there, but to our purposes, the end result of that is there's less trucking capacity, which really caused on many lanes rates to skyrocket.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I you know, working with analysts from the trucking side, yeah, it was a hockey stick on some of the charts that I saw going back to hockey.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and you know what that does is it opens up opportunity for modal conversion.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, particularly on the domestic intermodal side, what we heard from a lot of the class one railroads was hey, we had great growth, and they themselves were saying a lot of this is just because it got comparatively much more expensive to move things by truck.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a policy result.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was um the administration not intending that result.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think the intention of um many of the efforts in the truck driving space was to improve motorist safety, was to try to get unsafe or underqualified drivers off the road.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so doing a lot of capacity came out of the system, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Prices went up, freight moved to the rails where it could.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one policy effect that, you know, and I think people are pretty familiar with that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Another one, and this has really been, I think, a learning opportunity for a lot of folks, is that you know, there was a lot of gnashing of teeth around the tariffs, going back to the liberation of tariffs in April of last year.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't intend to speak for the enduring result of all of that across every sector, but I can tell you in terms of the sectors we watch as things moving on rail, it looks to me like metals, steel, copper, things that were especially protected moved more, moved more quarter on quarter, year on year comparison.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So another part of the hat trick, the second piece is some of that activity seems to at least in the near term have resulted in, and it could last, um, some growth.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's nuance to that that we can get into.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third one, and this was really a learning opportunity for me, was you know, the connection between the war in Iran and rail volumes wasn't obvious to me going into it, but I really think it played out in a very fascinating way because you know, we are uh a great energy exporter now, but we haven't been always, you know.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: When I started my career, we were very energy dependent.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're a great energy exporter, and particularly on the natural gas side, we're relatively insulated from the rest of the world.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, uh compared to like our European trading partners, for example, or I should say our European competitors.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a long way of getting at the export opportunities, particularly for American petrochemical providers, for chemical makers, opened up by the fact that our natural gas feedstock was so much comparatively cheaper compared to global competitors, put a lot of volumes on the rail.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: At least that's the thesis that I'm putting out.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the three things that outside of all their other implications, um, the crackdown on truck drivers, the tariffs, and the run-up in energy prices owing to the war in Iran contributed a lot to Q2 volume growth on the rails.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, that it's funny because it's interesting, you had been working on the market consist for some time, and so you obviously have been watching that section of it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, a good core portion of the consist has been forecasting volumes, being very public about our accuracy, right?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so these two things are a little bit intertwined, but I think this gave you an opportunity to shine the light on some of the leading kind of indicators or drivers that would have shifted what we ultimately saw in the in the market contest.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know, but you know, kind of before we get into you know some of your takeaways on the earnings calls, which was a really fun and I think unique addition to this to this version.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I mean, volumes did great.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think everybody like banged that drum like very, very loudly across a couple of different sectors.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's it seemed like for me, reading through the the consist a couple of times, the the guy who went to corn school is extremely bullish on ag.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And to tell us a little bit more about what you think is kind of like driving up and supporting that.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, yeah, and I I I appreciate the the the shout out to my brethren at corn school where I you know once toiled proudly.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, so so and that that kind of goes back to I still believe that there's a strong headwind to corn volumes, and and you know, we've had some fun sharing that idea, which is that with these high energy prices, nitrogen is more expensive.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: When nitrogen isn't expensive, if I'm a farmer, I don't grow corn, I grow soybeans.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans are a smaller product per acre than corn, depressing volumes.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we made that call and it turned out to be verified by the planting intentions that the USDA shared.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: But even when I put that into our forecasting model, grain volume still looked really good.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was one headwind that like we included, but it didn't bring down um the model predictions.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a second sort of manual depression, if you will, that we put on the forecast was you know, most of our grain exports, particularly those corn soybean experts we're talking about, go to China.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: The trade relationship with China is very fraught right now.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, people who were watching towards the end of last year really saw how ugly it can get before it gets better.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we ratcheted that down a little bit, but it still looks strong.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the the crop right now, we don't know the new crop year results, but I think there's come out of the ground yet.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hasn't come out of the ground yet, but there's reason to believe it's it's gonna be strong.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I still think it will be weaker than it would have been without this crop choice switch.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, that was a long way of getting at.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're calling for strong grain volumes um even with those headwinds into this fall in this crop year.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody that has been uh the recipient, the recipient of a ton of Midwest corn sweat, I can tell you it does feel at least anecdotally in the environment that uh it's gonna be uh it's gonna be a strong year.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, China is back to buying.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we're uh you know we're we're in a good spot there.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like you're also pretty bullish on chemicals and petroleum and coal as well.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it seemed like like to tell us more about that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, uh and the the chemicals and the petroleum is really that fuel price story that we discussed with the metric.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I and and we're always happy to follow up with anyone who wants to talk about the technical side of the modeling, you know, exactly how it's built.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, suffice it to say, to put it briefly, um there's the quantitative output and then there's the fiddling with the dials we do to try to capture reality.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it they were strong and they came out stronger after we fiddled the dials to you know recognize this export opportunity, and that was particularly on chemicals and um petroleum products.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Coal is interesting in that I feel like we've always been contrarian there, in that we're not saying that the coal decline is over, we're not saying anything that dramatic.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: But even in the earnings calls, we saw class one carriers with year-on-year coal growth.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not all of them, but I think it was for sure one, if not two.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: We saw retirements, um, coal power plant retirements phased out longer or delayed owing to these energy prices.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in one of the quarters, we're talking about a modest increase, and that's increase year on year, not increase versus two years ago or three years ago, but like like signs of life that you know I believe will happen, and it was kind of I don't know, interesting or or dare I say exciting to see given the history of that sector is or the the commentary on that sector is almost always so negative.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: There was something inspiring to see a little bit of light there.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the you know, I've I'm always known for giving you a curveball on these.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: How much of this drum banging and celebratory nature of the earnings calls is owed back to the data center build-out?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you discussed that in the market contest, but how how much of that is really being driven by that pronounced effect on the economy?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, that's a great question.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: If I if I had everything I wanted, I would know the exact number.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know, I I I say that in the sense that, you know, what's a number good for?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: A number is really just a measure of proportion.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is something big or small?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And no matter what, the data center build-out is big.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have the figure in there.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um seven trillion dollars globally expected to be spent by 2030.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's big.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of money, it's a lot of volume.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: I guess the the mystery number that it's a low it's a lot of energy.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: The the mystery that we don't have is you know how much of that building activity will use rail transport.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people have maybe seen there's been some interesting articles about how much of it is moving in the air, um, the influence in certain parts of the trucking market.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think it stands to reason that rail will get a piece of it, but the number I don't have at the top of my head is how big that piece is.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: My my my view is that if you're working at a railroad, large or small today, especially especially if you're in the short line space, the ability to lay a stub track and work with your economic development partners to figure out where things are going.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I know that this is a big shell game.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes, like the what's discussed in a public hearing is definitely not what actually shows up, and there are multiple kind of shell corporations in the in this overall process.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: By the time like things are being built, people are rarely informed.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that there is a really great opportunity, and I think we have seen definitely an uptick, and I know like in the grander volumes, yes, like aggregates are doing really well.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've definitely seen that with some of our customers.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so it it stands to reason that if you work in economic development development or you're managing a market, it is high time for you to be working the phones or going to events to seeing if you can just position your franchise, your network, your 30 miles of track to be kind of the in delivery method for that.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is it is relatively easy to lay a stub track, relatively easy to set up kind of like a transload operation.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's kind of the fun thing about transloading, is you can stand that up in a lot of places.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I think there is an opportunity for rail to shine here.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it creates some pressure for folks to get out of their houses and go uh and go go talk to some folks, but I think there is a there's a really interesting opportunity there.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that that's a great call-out too, because I think when we think about the data center build out, it's easy to miss a really critical piece, which is it's not just the big warehouses full of servers, it's also the power network that that feeds those facilities.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Generators, all that stuff, yeah.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, the stuff that's gonna move on the rail.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, just thinking back that I haven't seen much reference of it recently, but uh at least the the conversation at the federal level about the build-out of these data centers was that they were gonna be responsible for building their own power supplies.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how that plays out is probably gonna be decided at a more local level, but I do think a lot of capacity is gonna come online, a lot of stuff is gonna get built just to power those facilities, which is another component of of rail volumes too.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and brings brings up one thing that that has happened, you know, even since our last draft of the consists, but as we were thinking about I I don't want to worry any of the production team, I don't this really just means I think we have the right words in there, we don't need to take them out, was that we called out you know some of the risks to forecast towards the end.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: We always did and and one of the risks to forecast at that time was well, you know, New York State declared a moratorium on data center construction.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Readers might want to look out for more of those to see if this thing's gonna be slowed.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, since we put together basically the final version, uh Texas of all states is is taking similar actions, not the same kind of moratorium, but a change in position.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and I really think that candidates' positions on data centers and energy prices are gonna come up this November, and that could turn into either a very strong tailwind or a very strong headwind for for this construction.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, d I mean, depending on the region, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if we say, for example, if North Dakota is pro and South Dakota's against, or or vice versa, that will change the landscape of where the build-out happens and obviously rail traffic.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if if you're in one of those areas and you have decision rights over economic development or influence, it's probably a great time to actually begin some of some of those conversations.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, David, I'm super excited for this version of the market consists.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like it it came together really well.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a lot of interesting, I think, traditional points in view in there, but you really want the extra mile to add in so some additional context and cut and color.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the readers are definitely gonna benefit for it.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for uh for shipping out another episode.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And folks, we have enjoyed having you for another edition of Talk Track where David and I share a little bit of the news of the day.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Telegraph makes it in, and we're excited for you to read the market contests coming up.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have the opportunity, follow us on LinkedIn or visit us at telegraph.io.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.