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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper Bascically, trucks were the competition for railroads when railroads were truly full-service transportation companies. But they don't really do any LCL business these days. All independent surveys have shown that trucks do NOT pay their fair share of highway maintenance costs and that highway taxes from private cars do make up the difference. But again, I must bring up the whole question of land use, particularly with regard to expresways through cities and other buit-up areas. But in general, today, trucks and railroads coexist and don't compete. Railroads have locked up some markets and trucks others. On long distances piggyback and containers, they cooperate. And the coal that doesn't move by railroad largely moves by water, not trucks, or just by wire with mine-mouth power plants. And maybe autos should subsidize trucks. Most truck trips are essential to the US economy. Much auto traffic is leasure. I am asking the question, not rendering an opinion. But I say again that all highway traffic is subsidized because of land use. [/quote] I don't know what LCL has to do with it, but trains and trucks are in continuous, ongoing competition day in and day out. Take as an example a load tendered to JB Hunt by a shipper. Hunt has basically three ways to move it: 1) Use a company employed driver and company owned highway tractor. 2) Use an independant owner operator with his own highway tractor. 3) Take it to a railroad intermodal faciility and send it by train. The three options involve rail vs truck competition within JB Hunt. Hunt will select the option that best meets the needs of the shipment in terms of price and service. To get the load the railroad has to compete with the trucking options and make itself the best value to Hunt. Another example is the 500,000 loads of produce leaving California by truck each year, mostly on long haul journeys to eastern population centers. Those trucks don't return to California empty. So, that's 1,000,000 competitive long haul loads right there. Anyone (FM) who says there is no truck/rail competition doesn't understand reality. When I was in intermodal marketing I went head to head with truckers all the time. If I had time I'd tell you all about the beer move from Memphis to Chicago and Milwaukee we snatched away from the truckers - and it was a 500 mile rail haul. [/quote] BFD First of all, the only reason such traffic moved by truck at all was that a corresponding rail service didn't exist. Once the railroad decided it could be bothered with that traffic, it naturally shifted to the railroad. 500 miles is a decent length for a rail corridor. Trucks cannot compete with railroads in anything longer than 250 miles. It's only when railroads don't want to provide the service that it shifts to trucks. And are you sure that beer moved from Memphis to Milwaukee, and not the other way around?[;)] And intermodal is not rail vs truck competition, it is rail and truck cooperation. The railroad is competing with another entity in your example, but that entity is entailed in the comparative infrastructure e.g. highways, not the trucking companies. This is where railroaders get all mixed up, because they think infrastructure and transporting operations are inseperatable. Meanwhile, those of us in the real transporation world don't get the two all tied together.[^] Thus, the competition for rail intermodal is the federal highway system. Or, using Ken's logic, the trucking companies have to choose between using railroads or highways. If railroads are the competition(sic) for trucking companies, then it follows that highways are also the competition(sic) for trucking companies. Obviously, that is asinine.
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