Boston & Maine Railroad v. United States

These cases concern the range of the Interstate Commerce Commission’s power over rates for car hire in railroading. Because they predominantly originate freight, long-haul trunk-line railroads own most of the freight cars in the industry. Short-haul terminal railroads, on the other hand, mainly terminate freight; to avoid needless duplication, they hire the cars of the long-haul roads rather than replace them with their own. The compensation to be paid for use of another’s cars has, for the most part, been fixed by the railroads themselves, originally in terms of the mileage which borrowed…