Midwestern and western shippers would get single line access to Halifax, the closest deep-water port to Europe. The CEOs of both railroads told the merger announcement meeting that they expect to become more truck competitive and to begin to reverse their falling market share in transportation revenue. CN CEO Paul M. Tellier said that the railway share has fallen from 33% to 12% of North American truck/rail revenues since 1960. How serious is this threat? Four recent big rail mergers all made the same promise but instead drove some of their existing customers from intermodal to truck with unreliable deliveries. Burlington Northern bought Sante Fe in 1995. Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific in 1996. Norfolk Southern and CSX bought Conrail in 1998 and Canadian National bought Illinois Central earlier this year. Motor carriers should assume that the railroads will eventually learn to operate their merged lines as a single system and become more truck competitive.