Op Ed - "Railroad monopoly is drag from factory to the supermarket"

[n012944]

The last time I looked, railroads and truckers did compete with each other, hardly a monopoly.

Yep, I just read where JB Hunt was thinking of entering the Powder River Basin to haul coal to Midwest utilities!  Meanwhile, Schnieder is thinking of contracting with Cargill to move Montana grain to the pacific coast ports, and Navajo will soon start their own single stack road trains to haul containers from LA to Chicago!

Yep, them truckers provide tons of competition for the rairoads! 

(insert sarcastic smilie here)

 

Dave

"...of the People" - Learn it, love it, live it!

Thats right, I forgot that in Daves little world, industrys are supposed to be punished when they become more efficent than their competition. 

 

As for your little absurb twisted statement above, one of similar mindset could apply that to the artificial GVW and length limits placed on truckers - certainly that's an example of an industry being punished for "efficiency", isn't it?

As long as you don't own the right of way that you operate on, you gotta play by other people's rules. 

[edbenton]

Dave here is an interesting thing to THINK about.  When the US Interstate system was designed trucks were weighing a max of 73280 on 5 axles the engineers knew what they were facing.  Then all of a sudden in 1980 the limit was raised to 80K ever noticed it has been since then the roads in the country have gone into disrepair could not have been the simple fact the shipping company lobby got what it wanted an extra 10% increase in weight yet the roads were not designed for it.

[n012944]

Name for me any other industry where the customer is labeled as "the competition".

 Up until last year GM boughts engines from Honda for use in the Saturn Vue, making GM a customer of Honda.  I am sure that even you consider GM as competition to Honda, right? I don't see why this is so hard for you to grasp.  The railroads have to prove to the JB Hunts and UPSs of the world that putting their trailers on the railroad is better than driving them themselves. So the railroads are in competition with the trucking companys over costs for transporting the trailers.  If it became much cheaper to drive the trailers from say LA to Chicago, I am sure you would see much less UPS traffic on that corridor.

[alphas]

Edbenton's point about truck weight is well taken.  Plus there's too much cheating going on with the weight.    One of the more reknown engineers in the country had told me that the standards for interstate and similar highways should be raised uniformly to require 36 inches of concrete for new and total rebuilt construction instead of the current 18.   That would be more costly in the short run but more cost saving in the long run.   This move has been heavily resisted by politicians of all stripes and the highway maintenance lobby (which includes the various unions as well as the companies).