Fully allocated costing in U.S. regulated transportation industries

This paper considers costing criteria to evaluate various single capacity and alternative capacity rules for allocating shared costs among transportation movements (i.e. determining fully allocated costs). The costing evaluation criteria are: (1) core allocations, (2) encourages internally efficient capacity decisions, (3) fairness, and (4) low computation costs. The principal conclusion of the paper is that alternative capacity rules for allocating shared-capacity costs among transportation movements are generally superior to single capacity rules that have been used by the Interstate Commerce Commission.