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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by greyhounds [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal [ 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. [/quote] Yes, I'm sure the beer went northbound. It would have been far less attractive to us if it had been a southbound move. Strohs bought out a failing Schlitz, shuttered the Milwaukee brewery and began supplying the Chicago and Milwaukee markets from a Memphis brewery. We had an imbalance southbound, we had more loads south than north. So the NB beer represented an opportunity for revenue on train/trailer miles that otherwise were performed with less/ no revenue. Nailed it cold. I remember making our proposal to the Strohs transportation honcho. He said something like, "That's very impressive, but..." Then he pulled a piece of paper out of hiis pocket and said something like: "But Badger Freighways (a trucker Dave says were weren't competing with) is offering..." The Strohs guy then stopped, looked at the paper and put it back in his pocket. "You've done your homework", he then said. There was still a question as to wether we could offer the service quality needed to match the trucker. Our salesman, the late Joe Loesel, was on the dock when the first TOFC trailer from Memphis arrived. So was a reprsentative from Badger Freightways (that trucker we weren't, according to Dave, competing against.). Joe told me that when the Badger guy saw the condition of the load he looked sick. We had delivered the load overnight from Memphis in good condtion at a rate Badger couldn't meet. It was a large volume of TOFC freight, something like 15 loads/day from Memphis to the Chicago ramp. Last I heard, it was still moving in part. Strohs latter acquired a Minneapolis brewery and switched the Chicago and Milwaukee source to Minnesota. But for some reason they still supplied northwest Indiana from Memphis and that volume continued to move up the Main Line of Mid America. Dave is know for rash, unsupported statements, but this one is especially silly: [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal [ 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. [/quote][/quote] AHA! GOTTCHA! This is a TOFC move, ergo the product is still moving in a TRUCK TRAILER! This is what Ken doesn't understand. With TOFC, the product is still moving by truck (trailer). If you read his example closely, you will notice that what really happened was that one trucking company (in this example Badger Freightways) simply lost the business TO ANOTHER TRUCKING COMPANY, who then utilized TOFC.[^] E.g. there was no net loss of trucking business. The shift came at the infrastructural level, not the transporting level. The federal highway system lost the pathway wear and tear from user equipment to the railroad tracks. There was no aggregate loss of business, but it probably resulted in a small loss of fuel taxes for the Highway Trust Fund. [quote]QUOTE: Back to beer. We operated three intermodal trains each way per day between Chicago and Venice, IL (St. Louis) - 275 miles. Dave has obviously never tried to compete (oh, I forgot, according to him there is no competition) with trucks at 275 miles. I have.[/quote] Again, NO, you did not compete with the trucking industry, you instead cooperated with them. Since the stuff still moves in a trailer, a trucking company still garnered the revenue they would have had anyway even if the load had moved over highways. Ostensibly, one would think that the trucking company came out ahead with TOFC, so the net effect is a gain for the trucking industry. That's what TOFC does, it provides a win/win for both trucking companies and railroad companies. There is no net loser with TOFC, other than the Highway Trust Fund, and it's not a business so it doesn't count. You see, under modal competition there is a modal winner and a modal loser. When there is no modal loser, it ain't compeition. No need to comment on the rest of your novel, since the answer is still the same. FM truism #5 - Under TOFC, there is no modal loser, hence no modal competition, only modal cooperation.
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