Originally Posted By: jimbrewer
Sure, but that's the point; make the people buying the product pay the cost of shipping without a subsidy from the people who don't.
Perhaps it would be better to ship more stuff by rail and less by truck.
I have no problem with that. But keep in mind, there is a lot of government money that is thrown at the rail system. And the government has no money except that which they take from the people. And it still really doesn't solve anything. Not too many railroads, that I have seen, have a short hub to the back end of most grocery stores, walmarts, shopping malls, auto parts stores, etc, etc. It has to go from the rail to the customer by, you guessed it, a truck. And most times, many end users only get fractions of an entire truck load. Of course, that full truck load could be broken down into 6 more smaller trucks and delivered. More congestion, more fuel, substantially added cost to the consumer, etc. After almost 40 years in the transportation field, I have learned one thing about the general public... they have very little clue about logistics and how things get to where they are. A lot of folks want more rail. No problem. Even more waits for trains to get thru rail crossings, delays of product and goods almost 4 times more than via truckload. You can forget about overnight, next day, or even 3rd day delivery of something. Anyone who thinks air freight mostly moves by air is living in a fantasy land. The vast majority of next day and air freight is moved by truck, airport to airport. Don't believe it, give FedEx, Forward Air, Towne Air, UPS, and host of other carriers a call. They can fill you in.
Most grocery warehouses have only a 48 hr, or at most, a 72 hr turnover of regular grocery stuff. If all of that was taken over by rail, there would be mass shortages in quick order.
Gets a little complicated, but it is what it is to keep a country moving. Trucking moves 75% of what gets moved around this country. It is not going away, and will never be taken over by rail. Just not a logistical possibility. Those that want more regulations on trucks, taxing them more, etc are just inflating their cost to buy even the most basic essentials. The trucks will get the job done one way or another, and the cost will be passed on to the consumer. Be careful what you wish for.
Rail is already almost at full capacity. There just isn't more trains to shift much freight off of trucks to. Even though rail services auto assembly plants, the critical time frames that the assembly lines operate require a 30 minute window of good to arrive. There is no facilities to store weeks of parts and components. Trucks are the only thing that can keep the massive cost of warehousing auto production parts down, meet the assembly line time frames, are quick to facilitate freight changes in component parts changes due to OEM spot changes in design, By shifting most of the parts to assembly plants to rail, you can count on finished vehicle prices to inflate an easy 25% over what they are now.
Your call. Your dollar.