ČD Cargo refutes claims ‘rail can’t compete with road’ for smaller shippers

ČD Cargo has rejected the “simplistic conclusion that rail cannot compete with road”, after shippers interviewed on primetime Czech television said they had switched to trucks on cost and speed. Rail, the operator says, “can offer a competitive solution in terms of price, transport capacity and reliability”, for both larger and smaller customers.

The rebuttal responds to a report aired on 30 October by Události, the main evening news of public broadcaster Česká televize (ČT). It featured coal merchants and a forestry cooperative that have moved their freight to trucks, and closed on the argument that in such cases rail “can never compete with road”, because road haulage is cheaper, faster and more flexible. Responding to the segment in a detailed statement, ČD Cargo stated that it considered “some of the conclusions misleading and at odds with our current commercial policy and results.”

National figures lend the report some weight. Road carried around 82% of Czech freight tonne-km in 2025, while rail’s 14.3 billion tonne-km was a six-year low. The wagonload business that smaller shippers rely on has been struggling for some time. In April 2025, as ČD Cargo cut wagons, locomotives and staff, then-chairman Tomáš Tóth, who is now the head of infrastructure manager Správa železnic, said single wagonload “in its current form remains economically unsustainable”.

This story was originally published by RailFreight.com. Read the full story at RailFreight.com →