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[quote user="Datafever"][quote user="futuremodal"][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. [/quote] Let me tell you what I know.  On one branch line, during the late 60s to mid 70s, five elevators switched from rail transport to truck transport.  This led to the abandonment of the branch line.  The branch had been served by a weekly local and all grain hauled in box cars.  One of the elevator managers was my next door neighbor.  His position was that it was a matter of rates, and I have no reason to doubt him. Another elevator was located on a main line.  Again, the switch was made from rail transport to truck transport.  The RR agent and the elevator manager were next door neighbors, and after the switch to truck transport, the agent (retired by then) never spoke to the elevator manager again.  It was my understanding that it was a matter of rates. In neither case was RR abandonment an issue in any decision to switch to truck transport.  Where was the grain trucked to?  I don't know.  Not barge.  Another railroad?  Unlikely.  To another elevator that was able to get volume discounts?  Possibly. [/quote] Boxcars!  That explains it.  Labor intensive to unload, less capacity than hoppers.  The likelyhood is that the line was just too light in the rail to support hoppers, and hoppers are prefered for unloading or transloading whether it be at a mill or ship loading facility.  The railroad in question probably used the backdoor method of abandonment - not actually filing for abandonment what with five active customers, but rather using rate manipulation vis-a-vis boxcar vs hopper to *encourage* the clients to truck their grain to another terminal on the same railroad that could handle hoppers.  That's the "matter of rates" to which your friend refers. The point is, the railroad didn't lose the business to trucks, it rather used available trucks to force consolidation of the terminal operations, and "massage" a loss of online business on the branch to eventually *show* the ICC that the line had no more customers. Ergo, trucks were not the competition.
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