Similarly, this federal regulation of railroads authorized implementation details for Conrail, the new northeastern railroad system. Rails could establish rates except where the ICC determined there was no competition. Railroads could also create contracts without ICC oversight. This similarly flooded the rail market with too much competition to be effective.
Flooding the trucking market to ensure only the top companies, owned by former railroad capitalists, could maintain profitability, this eliminated all restrictions to entry allowing massive waves of new companies, and allowed each to set rates, creating a chaotic and unprofitability level of perfect competition. Where the ICC formerly regulated the routes that motor carriers could use and the geographic regions that they could serve to stunt their growth, now truckers could go anywhere and price freely within a “zone of reasonableness”.
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