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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by CrazyDiamond [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal You are showing that you have no conception of the context of the statement. Trucks via highways are the mode of choice for small lot shorthauls and expedient deliveries. Other than that, sending trailers by highways over long distances thar are also covered by railroads makes no sense.[/quote] You are showing that you are either business/market ignorant or have some oher self-serving agenda. Sending trailers over long distances via asphalt highways makes a ton of sense to a lot of very successful trucking companies AND TO THE COMPANIES THAT USE THEM AS THEIR FIRST CHOICE OF TRANSPORT. There are dozens of trucking companies that specialize in long haul from one end of the country to the other, and there are thousands of companies that know their needs are best looked after via tractor-trailors not trains. YOu've done a great job of convincing yourself, a weak job of convincing the rest of us....and a crappy job of covincing the shippers that trains will serve them best. I wish everything went by train, but it does not...and a lot of what does not go by train goes by truck because truck is the best way......you should go argue with my family....my uncle and a freind too each owns a tractor trailer company, and my dad and father-in-law are retired from the RR, my cousin works with CN, and my brother-in-law works in the yard. Ironically they all agree about the state of affairs with todays transport industry. None of them share your opinions. It is what it is. [:)] [/quote] Read SafetyValve's posts. He got it right, why can't you? IT DOES NOT MATTER TO THE TRUCKING COMPANY HOW THE TRAILER GETS THERE, AS LONG AS IT DOES SO AT THE LOWEST COST. It's called profit maximization. Even owner operators could theoretically send their long haul trailers by rail, they still get the payment when the trailer arrives, but they don't have to waste the time, fuel, and wear and tear on the cab and trailer. Ostensibly, if the railroad goes to the same place, and if they offer a flatcar or two to haul the trailer, it becomes a less costly venture in the macro sense, and both the truckers and the railroad gain in the deal. That's what TOFC is. The content of your latest knee-jerk response above shows that you have not actually read my posts, just reacted to a surmission on your part. You seem to be stuck in the boxcar vs trailer debate of yore, I am trying to educate you and others that today's truck/railroad relationship is purely cooperative. Yes, there are always exceptions, but by and large trucks, that is over the road long haul parallel to an active railroad from Point A to Point B trucking, do not compete for the same freight as railroads. This transition from neocompetition to mostly cooperation has evolved as railroads gave up on branchline carload services to focus on longer haul carload and unit/shuttle concepts. You would have to hypothesize that TOFC/COFC competes with boxcar traffic to even have a case for a "trucks vs rail" debate, and even then it's more "railroad intermodal vs railroad boxcar", not trucks vs rail. I seriously doubt you've even had discussions with your truck driving family where they could verify that they were competing with railroad carload offerings. More than likely if they did lose out to a railroad bid, it was an intermodal bid, not carload, which means they really lost out to another trucking firm or a 3pi, one that is up to speed enough to utilize rail intermodal as part and parcel of their entire transportation services array offered to it's customers. Try to remember this... Trucks will go long haul over the road when 1. There is no corresponding parallel functional rail line between the same points e.g. Boise to Reno, Billings to Lewiston ID, et al. 2. There is a parallel rail line but capacity constraints have forced a shift back to over the road trucking e.g. Boise to Portland 3. The load is too small to effectively move by rail, even TOFC 4. The load in question has some characteristic of specificity that precludes transport by TOFC et al. 5. Time constraints of the load in question preclude the inherent terminal delays of TOFC.
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