COOPERATION!!!!!!!!!!

[edblysard]

Hi Wabash,
The cargill elevator at Jancintoport keeps us busy all year long. Its located on the houston ship cahnnel, and they fill ships with wheat, rice, corn and peas and a lot of grains I have never seen, and dont think I would eat, for export. This place is busy all the time, at least one 80 to 100 cars train a day. Durning the last weeks of summer, three trains in and out is normal, and when winter wheat is here, man, you could walk miles on the tops of the cars. Glad to hear you guys are getting more new business, it all seems to have gotten stagnent for a while there....
Stay frosty,
Ed

[Anonymous]

Ed: i didn't have time to read all the response in this category so if i'm repeating someone else i'm sorry. you state that trucks ride on roads provided by taxpayers and this to a large extent is true. however, most of the big railroads that have been around since the 1800's were constructed using land grants from the federal government. for every mile of track completed the rr's were given sections of land to help compensate for their massive outlay of money. the union pacific, central pacific etc. only hill's great northern (of the major trascons) was constructed from private funds with no land grants. the rr's benfitted greatly from this. the lands at the time were largely unpopulated so the rr's recruited peoplr from all over the world to come to these lands. additionally the rr's retained some of the best parcels for their own usage. to say that all rr's built out of their own pockets is not true. yes it is true that the rr's populated a large portion of this great country but some of them profitted from this adventure and some profitted illegally from it. read up on the credit mobiler scandal of the 1870's and see how the rr's caused all kinds of bank trouble and almost brought the country to it's knees. also, truckers do pay road usage taxes on every mile they run. most of this money comes from fuel taxes on diesel. rr's do not pay road use taxes on the fuel they use. by the way i have been in trucking for 30 years and have been a rr fan since i was a kid.
vincent

[edblysard]

Very true, Vincent,
Railroads did get hugh land grants, and used those land to build business, and populate a large portion of the US west of the mississippi.
If it were not for the railroads having done so, how long would it have taken? Who knows. I agree also that railroads profited hugely from this.
But my point was directed towards current times.
And the US Interstate system was built using taxpayers funds. The land grants railroads were issued were awarded only after the railroad had laid its tracks. In some instances, the grants alternated from side to side along the right of way, on purpose, to allow private business to acquire access to the tracks, with the intent that where business sprang up, population would follow, settle and build comunities, and so they did. Not often known is the fact that the federal goverment had access to the tracks, at no fee, for the movement of troups, federal property and other such things. So yes, in a way the federal goverment subsidised the railroads expansion west, but only after a vast finanical outlay by the railroads themselve. Many roads went bust in the attempt. What I was getting at is that the trucking industry dosnt pay for the inital contsruction of the roads they use, they pay no fees, with the exception of a few toll roads, to use the property, pay no upkeep or maintanince cost, yet can drive on them anywhere they wish at anytime they please. The burden of construction and upkeep is placed on the private citizen. And the interstate was designed by the federal goverment during the Eisenhower years to do the exact same thing the railroad land grants/expanision project did, just using automobiles instead of trains. So had the goverment laid the track, bought the locomotives and railcars, paid the track gangs and train crews, and paid the insurance, and at taxpayers expense kept the tracks repaired, cleaned up the wrecks and repaired the roadbed, and provide ongoing improvement to the system, built the terminials, frieght houses and other infrastructure needed, then the it would be on par with interstate system. And by the way, my father in law is a owner operator, with two kenworths. Railroads to this day still refuse to accept goverment sibsidation, for fear that goverment regulation would be a factor in it. Competition amongst themselves may have been the only thing that saved railroads within the last 30 years...
Ed