Originally Posted By: grampi
How can it be cheaper to ship by truck when you can ship the cargo of 100 trucks on one train?
If your metric is fuel consumed, you are right. By that metric, we should be barging everything as that is the cheapest form of transport based on energy consumed...
If your metric is total costs, including time in transport, handling, transport costs on either end, etc... then you are wrong.
Rail is great at covering long distances on its own schedule. Where it stinks is delivering that last mile to the customer. For things that don't make sense to ship in bulk, intermodal containers provide an option to ship via rail service to take advantage of that mode of cost effectiveness. Yet it still takes a truck to get it to the railyard, and then another one to deliver it to the customer.
There is no right or wrong answer - its what the customer demands...