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[quote user="riprap"] Since the economic argument in favor of double-stack trains must be quite strong, for what reason would we continue to see piggy-back trains?  Have the number of piggy-back trains/shipments gone down over the last few years, or have they stayed about the same? [/quote] Another excellent topic. In short, the railroads favor double stack over TOFC, while the trucking companies prefer TOFC over COFC. This shouldn't be too suprising, since each player is trying to maximize it's respective load factors.  Railroads can fit 250 or so domestic containers per train in double stack mode vs 125 or so trailers in TOFC mode.  The problem is that 53' domestic containers have about 10% to 15% less capacity than 53' high cube wide body dry vans.  In order for a domestic container to have nearly the same capacity as the ultra capacity dry vans, those domestic containers would have to be 10 1/2 feet high.  Since double stack clearances only allow two 9.5' high containers, an ultra high container would have to ride single stack or on top of an 8.5' high container.  If a domestic container is riding single stack, it defeats the purpose of going container vs trailer.  Thus, trucking companies have to limit their load factor to conform to the railroads' double stack ideal. Because of the railroads' pricing power, they have basically forced domestic intermodal players to utilize the less efficient containers as opposed to the prefered (and more efficient) ultra high cube dry vans.  Which is why (1) we still have gobs of over the road trucks on our highways, (2) most of the growth in intermodal is for international containers, (3) and why the trucking industry still carries 80% of revenue intercity tonnage.
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