Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="Datafever"][quote user="futuremodal"][quote user="Datafever"][quote user="futuremodal"] 10,000 tons of coal are not going to move by highway.  250 containers bi-weekly are not going to move by highway.  A million bushels of grain bought on the market is not going to move by highway. [/quote] Not entirely accurate.  Back in the 60's/70's, many grain elevators switched from rail transportation to truck transportation.  The rail service could not compete with trucking rates. [/quote] No, they didn't just "switch" per free market incentives.  The railroads stopped providing timely service (kind of hard to compete in real time markets when the railroad can't get the hoppers you ordered until three weeks later), or they abandoned the line serving the rail shipper altogether. When rail shippers can get timely rail service at reasonable rates, they use it, because there is no other mode that can compete with railroads when railroads are running on all cylinders, metaphorically speaking. [/quote] Well, the grain elevators that I know of, switched because of "free market incentives".  The railroad did not stop anything - their service continued normally.  The railroads agents were fairly ticked off at the elevator operators for switching to truck transportation. [/quote] Unless you're talking about a relatively short haul for the truck transport, you're missing something.  Could it be that the elevator in question was given incentive to truck their grain to another railroad's facility, or a barge facility? One thing that happened frequently during the abandonment years was that some line hauls became longer as the direct line was cut off by abandonment.  This caused more circuituous routings, and subsequently higher rates to cover those higher direct costs.  Other lines could not handle the "new" 264k cars, so you get incentives to truck to 264k compiant railheads.  You may call that "free market", but I call it government sanctioned market skewing.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag