Car Hire is rental paid by railroads to equipment owners. Click on the title of each Car Hire Railinc application below for details.
Car Hire for railroad marked cars is governed by the AAR Circular OT-10, Code of Car Hire Rules and Interpretations Freight.
Car Hire for private marked cars is governed by tariff RIC 6007.
This series of presentations explains the various principles of car hire, the charge paid by one railroad for its use of another railroad's railcars. This training program is fully endorsed by the AAR Equipment Assets Committee (EAC) and the Association of Car Accounting and Car Service Officers (ACACSO). The material was originally presented by industry experts at the American Short Line & Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA) convention in April 2013.
Be sure to turn your speakers on/up to hear these presentations.
The Car Accounting Self-Service (CASS) application enables car accountants to access and analyze car hire liability data by translating event data into actionable information. Users can view information on an individual piece of equipment for a range of up to 90 days. CASS also enables railroads to submit a Liability Acceptance Message (LAM) when erroneous event reporting has caused car hire responsibility to be assigned to the wrong carrier.
CASS also enables Car Hire Liability File (CHLF) recipients to view a car's possession and liability data including payables and receivables information, embedded movement events to support records of loaded and empty cycles, CHARM rates, and detailed mileage data for each cycle.
The Car Hire Accounting Rate Master (CHARM) helps users manage and understand the costs of rail car use and repair. CHARM is the official source of time and mileage rates on freight cars. The rates contained in these customized files are confidential to each owner and user. They contain rates effective for the current month and are updated each subsequent month with the appropriate deprescribed or prescribed rates effective for the month.
The Car Hire Data Exchange (CHDX) supports the periodic (post-operation) exchange of information to clarify payables and receivables. CHDX is a monthly exchange of time and mileage payment information. Participating carriers submit their car hire payables in the form of 414 transaction sets. Once all submissions have been received, they are sorted and each participant's car hire receivables are prepared and mailed. CHDX data is also summarized so that car hire can be settled in the Railroad Clearinghouse (RCH).
| Month | Date In | Production Date | Date Out | RCH Report Availability | RCH Funds Transfer Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 27 |
| February | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 24 |
| March | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 24 |
| April | 11 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 25 |
| May | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 23 |
| June | 11 | 12 | 13 | 16 | 25 |
| July | 11 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 25 |
| August | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 22 |
| September | 11 | 12 | 15 | 16 | 25 |
| October | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 27 |
| November | 12 | 13 | 14 | 17 | 25 |
| December | 11 | 12 | 15 | 16 | 23 |
Note: Any files submitted after 5pm Eastern Time on the IN date may not be included in the production run. If you have questions about the CHDX schedule, please contact the Railinc Customer Success Center at csc@railinc.com.
The Car Hire Rate Negotiation Self-Service (CHRNSS) application provides a single access point for car hire negotiations. The application enables users to transition from legacy in-house deprescription bid-and-offer systems to a centralized, Railinc-supported solution.
Through features like a detailed bid-and-offer dashboard, CHRNSS lessens the administrative effort required to participate in bid-and-offer negotiations. The application also provides specific information about car type and characteristics that can be used to define the types of cars needed for a more efficient negotiation process.
Car Hire Rate Negotiation Self-Service task demos are available in the Car Hire Training section above.
Note: Effective July 1, 2015, Bid and Offer Roster List information is available via the free FindUs.Rail look-up tool. For more information, please contact the Railinc Customer Success Center at csc@railinc.com or 877-724-5462
Original Cost Self-Service (OCSS) is an application that enables superstructure owners to confirm and store original and rebuilt cost data in a centralized location. OCSS facilitates the audit process so that the audit team may review original and rebuilt cost documents for superstructures before the values are updated in Umler®.
OCSS serves as a document repository of invoices and other documents to support the cost value of a non-integrated superstructure (car rack attached to a vehicular flat car). It facilitates the audit process for superstructures and ensures that superstructure owners provide accurate cost information for original and rebuilt superstructures.
Knowing accurate cost information is important to superstructure owners because the cost information determines how much money they can receive for the use of the superstructure according to Appendix T in AAR Circular OT-10.
Important: Upon deployment of OCSS on November 28, 2023, all existing superstructures were updated in Umler to have the status of “Verified”. Any superstructures added after the deployment of OCSS are initially entered with a status of “Estimated” and are required to be audited before they are granted “Verified” status.
