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double-stack vs piggyback
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[quote user="greyhounds"][quote user="futuremodal"] <P>One other thing about this double stack vs piggyback debate, and it plays into the perception that US railroads favor foreign producers over domestic producers - While most dry vans are still manufactured in the US and North America, most domestic containers these days are manufactured <EM>overseas</EM>. Thus, the railroads' preference for COFC over TOFC ends up favoring foreign manufacturers over US manufacturers.</P> <P>It's bad enough that differential pricing schemes always cross subsidize foreign importers at the expense of captive US rail shippers. Now the railroads are adding to that anti-US aspect by favoring domestic double stack over TOFC.</P> <P>Well, that's par for the course, isn't it?</P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P>Ah, no.</P> <P>There are very, very few "captive shippers". The GAO says about 6%. There aren't enough of them to cross subsidize much of anything.</P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P>Wrong. Dead wrong. The GAO is using non specific data not necessarily related to the railroads' actual customer base. They, like you, count the existence of even a nearby gravel road as *proof* that said shipper has the option of trucking to counter the captivity to one Class I rail offerring. The GAO, like you, either cannot or will not allow for modal differentiation in determining best use analysis of the nation's transportation system. </P> <P>In retrospect, how did they even come up with the 6% figure? Did they actually find some producers inaccessable to truckers?</P> <P>We've been through this time and again, and the same dense skulls continue to classify the different modes into the same broad catagorization for the sake of muddying up the issue. Of course, if there were no captive shippers, there'd be no differential pricing, would there?[;)]</P> <P>[quote]</P> <P>And there is no "cross subsidy". </P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P>Differential pricing is a cross subsidy. They are one and the same. You know this, you just don't want to acknowledge it.</P> <P>[quote]</P> <P>Double stack/domestic containerization revolutionized long haul freight movement in North America. We'd certainly be at grid-lock without it. When domestic intermodal service first began to develop, around 1921, it was a container based network. Then the asinine Federal Government got involved and issued an economic decree that stopped container development. The railroads had to develop a trailer based intermodal system to comply with the wrong headed regulations, not because it was the most economic system. </P> <P>When the regulations were removed, in 1981, the system turned back to containerization. The result of natural market forces seeking the low cost solution.</P> <P>[/quote]</P> <P>The removal of regulations only allowed the railroads to limit the market reach to their POV. It is not a free market force that has resulted in domestic containerization, it is the monopoly power of the railroads that has forced domestic containerization on intermodal firms. It's also been a huge waste of capital for our economy, as we've basically had to build superfluous equipment to meet the railroads' demands (free of true free market forces) while continuing to meet the boots on the ground demand of shippers. The latter want more trucking capacity, pure and simple, because that's their bread and butter/meat and potatoes mode, with railroads being more of a side dish. They'll survive without railroads if need be, but in no way would they survive without trucking.</P> <P>Increasing truck capacity is the only way our economy will keep rolling along. Domestic containerization limits that ability.</P>
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