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[quote user="Murphy Siding"]    So, yes-the railroad did lose business to trucks.  To reach a different conclussion isn't being realistic.[/quote] Guess again, cluss!  If you read Datafever's explanation, the railroad kept the business via terminal consolidation.  The trucks just delivered to the unit train terminal to save the railroad the hassle of operating a marginal branchline.  It was the railroad's preference.  So, no - the railroad did not lose business to trucks.  They simply utilized trucks to feed the consolidated terminal, e.g. the trucks acted as the railroad's cargo collection system.  The trucks were probably non-union, so there was a certain degree of labor cost reduction in the supply chain. However, there was no increase in supply chain efficiency, rather a reduction.  Carload freight is still 3 to 4 times as fuel efficient as the largest trucks out there, and even with unit train consolidation there is no reason carload's cannot be aggregated into unit train configs.  A shortline outfit (read:  non-union) probably could have run the line profitably, but this was pre-Staggers.
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