Private rail freight operators are growing their market shares in Germany. That follows from a recently released 2024 market study by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). However, as private trains enter the rail network, they also encounter far-reaching obstacles: rail freight suffers from severe delays, much more so than passenger trains.
Let’s start with the good news (for non-incumbent rail operators). These companies have managed to hold relatively firm despite the many adversities of the past years. They managed a transport performance of some 80.5 billion tonne-kilometres in 2024. That is around the same level as 2021, and up significantly from 2020’s 66.8 billion tonne-kilometres.
Performance has declined slightly since 2022 (82.5 tonne-kilometres), but the overall picture is that the private sector is standing their ground. That is also reflected in market shares: the charts in this text will tell you more.
The coin also has a flipside. Despite the relative success of private operators, state-owned companies (notably DB Cargo) have fared less well. As a result, the overall performance of the rail freight industry has been in decline since peak year 2022. That applies to both performance in tonne-kilometres and train-kilometres.
Whereas private operators have managed to maintain or improve their transport performance, the state-owned businesses have embarked on the opposite path. To illustrate: private operators improve their train-kilometre performance from around 136 million kilometres in 2020 to 158 kilometres in 2024. The state-owned businesses declined from 111 million to around 93 million.
Why is DB Cargo losing ground?
The gap between private and public is widening, with private parties now taking a 60% market share in tonne-kilometres. An important reason for that development is that publicly owned freight operator DB Cargo is currently in restructuring proceedings. Under its previous CEO, the company aimed to cut or discontinue unprofitable services. That could explain part of the market share loss.
The company is legally barred from expanding beyond its pre-restructuring transport performance under an agreement with the European Commission. It is also on a tight deadline to become profitable in one year’s time, meaning that business development aimed at expansion is unlikely (and impossible) to be on the agenda.
An interesting detail: despite maintaining a general market share of around 40%, DB Cargo is notably absent from the Combined Transport (CT) market. CT accounts for around 40% of all rail freight in Germany. DB Cargo maintains a 23.7% market share in this segment. Private operators are much more prominent in CT, including operators from outside Germany. Those include boxXpress, Crossrail/BLS, METRANS, SBB Cargo International and TX-Logistik, says the Federal Network Agency.
Success amid chaos
The relative success of the private operators comes despite the abovementioned adversities. One of those is the, one could probably say fairly, horrendous state of affairs on the German railway network.
See, for instance, the data on punctuality. Rail freight clearly suffers from the worst rate of delays in Germany, with only 55% of freight trains being on time in 2024. There is a worsening trend in the past years, with long-distance passenger traffic recording the biggest decline.
Operational train preparation
The graph below details the categories of causes per rail segment (freight and the two types of passenger rail). On this topic, the Federal Network Agency says: “Particularly striking are the very high delay minutes per kilometre in rail freight, amounting to 33.4 minutes per 100 train-path kilometres in the operations category.”
Operations-related delays are clearly a major hindrance to the freight industry. “These are largely driven by events related to operational train preparation alone, which account for 26 minutes”, explains the Federal Network Agency. “However, it should be noted that departure punctuality in rail freight is also influenced by the punctuality of upstream transport chains and processes. The average delay attributable solely to operational train preparation amounts to 115 minutes per affected freight train (median: 60 minutes).”
In this context, operational train preparation refers to a punctual handover of a freight train to DB InfraGO. The infrastructure manager defines this as “trains handed over late to DB Netz [DB InfraGO] at the train’s departure station for reasons within the remit of the railway undertaking.” In other words, DB InfraGO does not take responsibility for these delays. In 2024, they accounted for around 68% (64.7 million of 95.5 million minutes) of delays within the operations category.
The other delay category that stands out are train-sequencing delays. Those count for some 17 minutes per 100 train-path kilometres, and have a lot to do with the priority given to passenger services.
The Federal Network Agency concludes with a damning picture for German rail freight: “Under the simplified assumption that such an average initial delay occurs during a train journey, this would result – over a route length of 600 kilometres (approximately the length of the German section of the Rhine–Alpine freight corridor) – in an average total delay of almost six hours.”