Railroads have always been an economical transportation mode for structural and coil steel. The Cincinnati & Lake Erie (CLE) is no stranger to steel related traffic, serving more than a dozen coil steel customers due to its long historical connection to the Midwestern Automotive Scheme. CLE employs both covered and uncovered coil steel cars. The uncovered coil flats hustle raw coil steel roll from Chicago and Great Lakes steel mills to stainless steel pickling plants to create stock for automotive stamping and OEM automotive assembly plants. Covered car move the finished coils to from these finishing mills to the final users. As a result, CLE has always maintained a large number of both types of cars.
The advent of various foreign automotive manufacturers locating in the Southeastern United States created a new customer base for traffic originating on the CLE. While these OEM automotive manufacturers have sourced steel from overseas, they have expanded into consuming domestic coil steel as trade agreements and tariffs imposed by the Trump administrations have leveled the playing field for domestic producers to some extent. This fact has seen CLE purchase additional finish coil steel cars and work with Georgia Road to move finished coil steel to the South to the new automotive centers in MS, AL, GA, TN and SC.
Coil Steel is not only used in the automotive industry, but also in making various electrical conduit and equipment, seamless drilling pipe and rebar to name a few. One very recent example of new business is the expansion of the US Steel Fairfield Seamless Pipe Mill in Birmingham, AL. This mill comprises the primary drilling pipe mill operated by US Steel, serving customers all over the North America. Historically, the input steel and coil originated from the Fairfield BOF furnace and adjacent rolling mills originally owned by Tennessee, Iron and Steel (TCI). With domestic production beleaguered by cheap imports, US Steel closed the BOF furnace and adjacent rolling mills due to age and high costs needed to upgrade in favor of expanding or preserving mills around Gary, IN. The pipe mills continued production, its business rising and falling with oil fortunes and demand. The input coil steel was moved South from the Great Lakes area.
In 2026, US Steel (now owned by Nippon Steel of Japan) announced it would increase capacity at the Fairfield Plant. This was the second such expansion in the area following the Fairfield Works closure, the first being the addition of an electric arc mini mill to convert scrap into new raw steel. This expansion would also require the reopening of one of the idle BOF furnaces at its Gary Works in Indiana to provide steel billets to mix with scrap produced steel at the Fairfield Mini mill. This announcement would significantly affect both the Georgia Road who works the Fairfield Plant and the CLE, who will move unit coil and billet trains between Gary Indiana (via its Chicago gateway) and connection to Georgia Road to the South at Louisville (EAST).
Georgia Road Transportation 