Trains Magazine needs a good article, or series, on Trucks, the Trucking Industry, and Roads.

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Looks like you've got a good start there - get cracking!

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The railroads have been in a fight for their existence for longer than any of your readers have been alive yet you don’t seem to have had an article specifically on the threat. Many have it as a second point, such as the VANISHING FREIGHT article in the November 2019 issue. I would like to know more about the internal operations on modern trucking if just to better understand them. Something has changed as I am seeing new grain bins of a size that use to require a rail line that are clearly truck only.

 

 Some key dates I know off are the introduction of the Model T in 1908, a truly affordable car produced in large numbers with other brands to follow. Cars quickly converted Interurban from breakthrough technology to a money pit. The first REO Speedwagon in 1915 is a symbol of the transition from slow moving hard tired trucks that competed with Oxen and horse teams to fast rubber tired trucks with full transmissions that could move fast enough to start beating trains in delivery time.

WWI has been described as “The Truck Beat the Train”, mostly referring delivering supplies to the front lines. In the US busses and cars destroyed local passenger traffic when demand should have been the highest. It was the start of the rapid folding of so many short lines.

The 20’s and 30’s had the establishment of National Roads and a constant improvement in the quality and numbers of improved and paved roads, along with growth in the quality and size of vehicles. I don’t know about the growth in size and structure of trucking companies but its 20 years, it happened.

 

Post WWII there was the construction of the Interstate System, with many railroads having their last productive act being hauling the cement and gravel to build the highway that killed them. You also had the replacement of gas engines with long lived turbo diesels. The last I know much about was the use of GPS links and sophisticated software to track every cab and schedule pick up and deliveries in a seamless national level. And this was 30 years ago, there has to have been much growth in methods since.

There is a good, important article here, waiting to be written.