Progress Towards Safer Rail Tank Cars Transporting Flammable Liquids: 2026 Report

Number of Rail Tank Cars Meeting DOT-117 Specifications and Phase-out Deadlines for All Other Rail Tank Cars

Source: BTS, data from Railinc datasets, Umler® and TRAIN Ⅱ®, on rail tank car and annualized rail tank car movements between 2013 and 2025.

In accordance with the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT’s) BTS released the 2026 Tank Car Report. The report discusses the industry’s progress toward upgrading the rail tank car fleet to DOT-117 specifications, which meet upgraded safety requirements set by USDOT, and summarizes the types of tank cars carrying Class 3 flammable liquids. The rolling phase-out schedule for tank cars is based on the type of tank car and flammable liquid(s) carried.

The May 1, 2025 phase-out deadline affected several rail tank car and flammable liquid types. Jacketed CPC-1232 tank cars were prohibited from carrying ethanol and crude oil, and all DOT‑111 and CPC-1232 tank cars were prohibited from carrying other flammable liquids in packing group Ⅰ. 

Inventory of Rail Tank Cars Carrying Class 3 Flammable Liquids by Year 

Source: BTS, data from Railinc datasets, Umler® and TRAIN Ⅱ®, on rail tank car and annualized rail tank car movements between 2013 and 2025.

In 2025, 100,485 rail tank cars were used to carry Class 3 flammable liquids, a 0.6-percent decrease from 2024. In 2016, only 8 percent of the fleet that carried crude oil and other Class 3 flammable liquids were DOT-117 tank cars (new or retrofitted), compared to 76 percent in 2025. For crude oil alone, in 2025, 94.3 percent of the fleet consisted of DOT-117 tank cars, slightly down from 95.7 percent in 2024. 

Based on a survey of facilities capable of building and/or retrofitting per DOT-117 and DOT‑117R specifications, respectively, 2,137 new DOT-117 rail tank cars are projected to be built and 663 DOT-117R tank cars are projected to be retrofitted in 2026—for a projected total of 2,800 DOT-117 and DOT-117R tank cars added to the fleet in 2026.