Intermodal swan song

[ttrraaffiicc]

A very noteworthy event happened not long ago. The company Locomation successfully completed its first round of trials for its truck platooning technology. Technologies and trials such as this should be on the radar of any railfan as they are they are the harbingers of the end of our hobby.

Railroads are facing an existential threat, one which will be nearly impossible to surmount. That threat comes from advanced trucking technologies. These include platooning, autonomy and electrification. Currently, rail competes with road freight with price, being a cheaper, but slower and less reliable option. Even in this role, they perform poorly, having a fairly weak market share, especially in terms of tonnage[1].

So what do railways stand to lose in this coming decade? The short answer is simple: everything. According to the Locomation[2], commercial adoption of platooning can reduce overall costs of trucking by 30%. Currently, intermodal generally has a cost advantage over truckload of about 30%. This is all before decreases on fuel costs from electrification are taken into account. If platooning is adopted, intermodal has no purpose. It is slower and costs the same or even more.

There is the arguement that trucks run on public infrastructure, but that is a non-factor aside from being rhetoric from those who are pro rail. The fact that trucking infrastructure is publicly funded hasn't stopped freight from shifting to highway in huge numbers. As it is now, the amount of freight transported on roads is so overwhelming that rail would not be capable of taking enough of a mode share to make a difference. This forum's own Bruce Gillings agrees that roads could handle the freight task currently moved by rail.

There are things that railroads could theoretically do to help mitigate the consequences of road autonomy but in the end, there will still be catastrophic loss of volumes leading to irreparable damage to the industry. At the end of the day, a catastrophe is coming, it is just a matter of when. There wasn't anything the canal systems could do about the coming of the railroads in the 1830s. Now the railroads find themselves in a similar situation. Even analyst Anthony Hatch agrees that the situation poses an existential threat[3].

With this all said, this is definitely in line with long term trends. Freight just doesn't move by rail anymore. Boxcar traffic declined. Bulk traffic declined. Now intermodal traffic has reached its peak in 2018 and is falling. All of this is within the context of a growing economy. Railroad are moving to become very niche heavy haul movers in very select and specific locations. Its just the way it is.

So what to do? Get your pictures. Times are changing. 10-20 years from now, the world is going to change in ways that will make it unrecognizable. Experience what exists today before it is gone tommorow.

[1] https://www.bts.gov/topics/freight-transportation/freight-shipments-mode

[2] https://www.truckinginfo.com/10123518/autonomous-convoy-developer-locomation-completes-initial-phase-of-fleet-testing?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_campaign=20200814-NL-HDT-HeadlineNews-BOBCD200808028&omdt=NL-HDT-HeadlineNews&omid=1009532351&oly_enc_id=9675B4248456D1T

[3] https://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2020/08/18-railroads-have-time-and-money-to-head-off-threats-from-electric-autonomous-trucks

[n012944]

[Backshop]

Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old?

[adkrr64]

[ttrraaffiicc]

Backshop

Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old?

 

 

I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.

[SD60MAC9500]

 

ttrraaffiicc

 

 

Backshop

Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old?

 

 

 

 

 

I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.

 

Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less?

 

 

[Overmod]

Platooning is a wonderful thing, and deserves to be mentioned here as 'news'.  And it has implications, some complex, for railroads, which are fair topics for open discussion here.

On the other hand, trolling that the technological improvements will destroy railroading entirely within decades becomes tiring as well as very probably mistaken.  It largely destroys any point in posting the material on a forum like this in the first place.

Someone decades ago introduced the idea of the 'instant cliche': a new term or concept that almost immediately turns into a reaction of 'groan... not again!' as soon as you see key words.  The example back then included 'petrodollars' -- modern ones now include 'platooning', 'autonomous', snd 'electric battery drive'.

If I were Paul Hilal I'd have been actively investing in all these key technologies, as particularly in their present nascent state they're far more useful to rail intermodal than either a threat or a practical 'financeable' full replacement for it.  But as has been said, it can be difficult to convince the half-blind to see when they're convinced they have no problems with their vision...

[ttrraaffiicc]

SD60MAC9500

Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less?

https://medium.com/@sambokher/what-autonomy-means-for-the-trucking-industry-2c4ccbf6dc8c

Automation will cause huge consolidation in the trucking industry. Small players will cease to exist in the new market.

[Overmod]

ttrraaffiicc

Automation will cause huge consolidation in the trucking industry. Small players will cease to exist in the new market.

I thoroughly agree with the likelihood of the former with regard to the relatively huge capital requirements and liability coverage of even semiautonomous equipment.  While of course it won't follow the precise example of airline development, you can see the likely 'shaping forces' from that.

Of course the second half is nonsense, absent some national law restricting Interstates or any extensive amount of secondary or local roads to high-dollar trucks or users possessing high-dollar insurance coverage ... this is possible, but I think highly unlikely to persist even in a perverted democratic system of government.  The very large group of independents who finance a truck, team-drive with their spouse until they can't make the note or the runs (or get slammed by one of the legal CDL scams and can't drive) and then peddle the truck to the next victim can only be exacerbated when the trucks cost more, require more careful documented maintenance of highly specialized kinds, and incur more running expenses (likely including dramatically increased road-use fees for o/os and smaller fleets, and a wide variety of cheap-electronics-facilitated tolling charges, both for occupancy and time restrictions).

And of course the range of conventionals, who can happily hook to intermodal TOFC for last mile, but not engage in the brave new world of long-distance point-to-point... but these get lost in crayonista planning.

[Euclid]

ttrraaffiicc

 

Backshop

Can someone put on a new record, this one is getting old?

 

 

 

 

 

I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.

 

In an earlier one of your threads, I brought up the public inconvenience and hazard of platooning as it interferes with lane traffic.  You easily dismissed this by telling me that platooning was largely an outdated concept, and would not play a significant role in this transformation you say is coming.  You told me that it was autonomous operation and not platooning that would enable the transformation.  You seemed to be saying that platooning was yesterday's news. 

[Erik_Mag]

ttrraaffiicc

I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.

While it may be technically feasible, there still is the question about platooning interfering with other traffic and the highway. One solution is that platooning has to be done on dedicates that are fully supported by direct user fees. This is not going to be cheap.

I'm also of the opinion that fully autonomous vehicles are at least a decade away due to issues with sensors under adverse conditions such as driving through slush.

[Overmod]

Erik_Mag

... there still is the question about platooning interfering with other traffic and the highway. One solution is that platooning has to be done on dedicated [ROWs] that are fully supported by direct user fees.

This is not necessarily a problem even for the old ITS models of platooning in the '40s that used inductive communication and 'brain boxes' for intersections and on-ramps.  Remember that even pure autonomy is responding to a range of obligate outside data, perhaps the most obvious of which is tracking of entering vehicles controlled by traffic lights (as is already very common in California).  Two perfectly workable solutions are: to limit the range of a given 'platoon' and the default or active spacing between platoons, to facilitate periodic entry into traffic flow just as is done now 'passively' for many freeways, or to coordinate the datastream within a platoon to 'break' it and adjust speed to allow entering traffic a safe island to come up to speed and merge across the 'platoon' lane.  The latter capability has to exist by default for platooning to be legal in any current State anyway (as unrestricted merge to the right is mandatory) so adaptation to entering traffic is not particularly difficult.  I suspect that any platoon will 'have' to respond to a right turn signal from the immediate left lane by dropping speed, perhaps precipitously, and then using appropriate following distance (depending on whether the 'merging' vehicle is autonomous or not, and the present negotiated 'safe braking distance' of least-capable vehicle in the following platooned consist) until the turning vehicle has fully exited the platooned lane.

[SD60MAC9500]

 

ttrraaffiicc

 

 

SD60MAC9500

Hey ttrraaffiicc.. What's approximately the percentage of fleets in trucking that have 20 Tractors or less?

 

 

https://medium.com/@sambokher/what-autonomy-means-for-the-trucking-industry-2c4ccbf6dc8c

Automation will cause huge consolidation in the trucking industry. Small players will cease to exist in the new market.

 

I'm not asking about automation and it's implications. Platooning doesn't have to require AV's. Platooning could happen now, yet it doesn't as there's no cost or speed benefit. Approx 90% of fleets have less than 20 PU's, and the vast majority of these are OTR fleets.. UPS, FedEx, JB HUNT, Schneider, etc. will not be investing in platooning either as the cost to benefit ratio rejects the operation of platooning.. AV's will not take off until battery tech has a breakthrough allowing 500-700 MI range at best with reduced tare weight.

Consolidation will happen that's a given, but not within the next 10-20 years.. One thing you forget to put into perspective is funding shortfalls in USHIS infrastructure. We are billions behind in upgrading the USHIS. Once we catch up in 2050 or later perhaps things will change then..

 

 

 

 

 

[Backshop]

A few points...

1. It doesn't matter how good autonomous/platooning trucks are if they aren't legal.

2. The first thing I learned when I was trained as a driver was that nowhere near the vast majority of my time would be on interstates or other limited access highways.

3. Most of the largest carriers from 20-30 years ago are either gone or a much smaller size.

4. I'm still waiting for the "flying cars" that were supposed to be the norm by 1970.

[BaltACD]

How much energy does it take to move a ton of freight on a rubber tired vehicle system on a highway vs. the energy required to move that same ton of freight on a steel wheeled vehicle on steel rail?

What is the cost of the energy?

[zugmann]

ttrraaffiicc

I am going to keep this record playing. The completion of this platooning trial is huge news and it will have massive negative implications on railroads.

As long as the paychecks keep coming, I guess. 

[Overmod]

SD60MAC9500

Platooning could happen now, yet it doesn't as there's no cost or speed benefit.

You must not have spent very much time driving in the West, at least in the late 1970s or early 1990s.  I have experienced many instances of 'convoys' conducting close drafting, with far less than a typical car length between; in fact (with a little judicious 'clearing' and permission illegally arranged over the CB) I have run in them.  They are only borderline legal, and objectively unsafe as hell, but very real fuel conservation results from the reduction of head-end resistance even absent considerations that 'vacuum drafting' as NASCAR practices it has elements of a net zero-sum game.

I was able to record an actual odometer 'mileage' of over 520 in one extended drafting session (westbound into and partially across the Mojave on I-10) in a basically-stock 1988 Lincoln Town Car, as I recall in the roughly-82mph speed range that matches the torque-curve peak of a 302 in the OD of an A4OD.   This of course was far beyond what the car could develop at any more efficient speed with its normal air-resistance characteristics, and involved 'locking in' to a low-pressure vortex behind a particular trailer; interestingly the car would hold position on cruise because the resistance both 'in front' and 'behind'  the still-air sweet spot caused slight speed lock-in outside the response band of the Lincoln cruise control.

Of course I lost the truck when he pulled off at a truck stop, like an idiot seeing my little green computer showing I had 38 or so miles remaining.  Unsurprisingly this number dropped like a rock; I think it went to 14 and then to zero in about three more miles, and I turned around in the median rather than find out what reserve I actually had...

[ttrraaffiicc]

BaltACD

How much energy does it take to move a ton of freight on a rubber tired vehicle system on a highway vs. the energy required to move that same ton of freight on a steel wheeled vehicle on steel rail?

What is the cost of the energy?

So there are multiple layers to this answer. The first is that trucking's energy consumption is shrinking substantially. Electrification will continue this trend. It may not match rail, but it only has to come close enough that the increase in energy consumption is outweighed by the downsides of using rail. This isn't far off.

The next point is that rail isn't as energy efficient as you think given that rail mileage between two points is often significantly longer than highway mileage. It is fine if rail is more energy efficient, but if more work is reqiured go accomplish the same task, then how much more efficient is it actually.

The third part is that energy is not the only determining factor in the cost of transport. Other factors including maintenance, overhead and labour all count towards total cost. Once trucking slashes its labour cost with automation and reduces its energy cost with platooning and electrification, trucking suddenly finds itself with a massive advantage.

[York1]

I'm not sure self-driving trucks are as close to reality as we think.

The technology is there.  Americans' attitudes have a ways to go.  Including me.  Admittedly, I'm old, but I don't know if I or anyone I know wants to be in front of a semi with no driver.

Another question I have concerns hacking.  Even our most secure systems have weaknesses that are open to hackers and enemy countries.  (I have the same concern for driverless trains.)

Right now we can't even stop a spammer from using a fake phone number.  What about valuable cargo in a semi moving through sparsely populated areas?

[Overmod]

Two points:

ttrraaffiicc

... trucking's energy consumption is shrinking substantially. Electrification will continue this trend. It may not match rail, but it only has to come close enough that the increase in energy consumption is outweighed by the downsides of using rail. This isn't far off.

The problem here is that battery electrification doesn't 'improve efficiency' so much as it substitutes 'electricity fairy' cost power for overtaxed fossil fuel.  Expect one of the first government actions to be a British-style road tax on charger MWh comparable to the fossil taxes.  Then expect the actual cost of power delivered by Megachargers to rise to cover the stranded cost of the added distribution architecture to serve them and likely the wheeling and storage costs for the power.

Second, you sagely note that

Other factors including maintenance, overhead and labour all count towards total cost. Once trucking slashes its labour cost with automation and reduces its energy cost with platooning and electrification, trucking suddenly finds itself with a massive advantage.

But not so sagely, perhaps conveniently, you do not mention maintenance on all that active autonomous architecture, replacement of cells or perhaps enormous strings on a regular basis, cost of retrieving vehicles with a wider range of failure or commanded shutdown ... there are many places for the fancy tech to break or malfunction, often 'unattended' ... and many of the consequences are less, and controls far less complex, for an autonomous rail consist than for the 240-odd autonomous trucks that replace it.  Now it's possible that big class 8 Tesla-built trucks will not suffer extreme maintenance issues, but several people with extremely good experience in actual trucking practice have at least suggested this won't be likely, and as pointed out one forced recovery of a stranded rig somewhere in Idaho eats up the marginal profit from an enormous number of road-miles of 'economical' marginal advantage over intermodal.

[charlie hebdo]

If the government undertook two major programs,  we might have a really efficient, integrated transportation system. 

1. Nationalize ROWs, with modern routing.  The compensation they would receive would allow the rails to modernize,  coupled with step two:

2. Permit integration of rail, road, and other modes.

[York1]

Overmod

The problem here is that battery electrification doesn't 'improve efficiency' so much as it substitutes 'electricity fairy' cost power for overtaxed fossil fuel.  Expect one of the first government actions to be a British-style road tax on charger MWh comparable to the fossil taxes.

Agreed.

This is already an issue with just the small number of electric cars we have.  They are not paying the road taxes that are included in the price of gasoline.

One of my daughters is able to recharge her Tesla at the hospital in which she works.  For free.  I asked her how long she thinks that will last.

 

charlie hebdo

2. Permit integration of rail, road, and other modes.

That's interesting, but how would it work?  Would the railroads, trucking companies, and shippers have to merge?  I can see the advantages, but I'm sure there would be huge hurdles to jump.

[Murphy Siding]

Second verse, same as the first

I'm Henry the 8th I am

 

Henry the 8th I am I am...

[BaltACD]

ttrraaffiicc

 

BaltACD

How much energy does it take to move a ton of freight on a rubber tired vehicle system on a highway vs. the energy required to move that same ton of freight on a steel wheeled vehicle on steel rail?

What is the cost of the energy? 

So there are multiple layers to this answer. The first is that trucking's energy consumption is shrinking substantially. Electrification will continue this trend. It may not match rail, but it only has to come close enough that the increase in energy consumption is outweighed by the downsides of using rail. This isn't far off.

The next point is that rail isn't as energy efficient as you think given that rail mileage between two points is often significantly longer than highway mileage. It is fine if rail is more energy efficient, but if more work is reqiured go accomplish the same task, then how much more efficient is it actually.

The third part is that energy is not the only determining factor in the cost of transport. Other factors including maintenance, overhead and labour all count towards total cost. Once trucking slashes its labour cost with automation and reduces its energy cost with platooning and electrification, trucking suddenly finds itself with a massive advantage.

Rubber tires just suck down fuel in comparison to steel wheel on steel rail.  Electricity - no matter how it gets on the road is far from free.  To date electricty used in transportation is relatively untaxed - the politicians will develop some means to tax it and thus raise its price exponentially.

Freight transportation is about $$$$$$$$$

[SD60MAC9500]

 

Overmod

 

 

SD60MAC9500

Platooning could happen now, yet it doesn't as there's no cost or speed benefit.

 

 

You must not have spent very much time driving in the West, at least in the late 1970s or early 1990s.  I have experienced many instances of 'convoys' conducting close drafting, with far less than a typical car length between; in fact (with a little judicious 'clearing' and permission illegally arranged over the CB) I have run in them.  They are only borderline legal, and objectively unsafe as hell, but very real fuel conservation results from the reduction of head-end resistance even absent considerations that 'vacuum drafting' as NASCAR practices it has elements of a net zero-sum game.

 

The 70's were before my time. I've traveled a many road trips throughout the West; I-5, I-8, I-10, I-15, I-17, I-40, I-70, I-80. From the 90's on up till last year, and drafting was a rare occurence with rigs.. Platooning has been investigated by the large carriers the ROI has produced no added benefit. You get better fuel economy capturing as many loaded miles as possible vs empty miles. Instead of doing something as risky as drafting which on the CV side of the equation doesn't produce significant fuel savings. From my road experience both professional, and personal. Those who draft vehicles especially CV's don't take into account tires blowing out, road debris, and other road hazards where your time to react will lead to severe injury or death. .

 

 

Backshop

 

I'm still waiting for the "flying cars" that were supposed to be the norm by 1970.

 

 

I hope that never happens.. People can't even operate their vehicles properly on the ground. 

 

 

 

[Gramp]

Wisconsin now charges a $75 annual license fee surcharge on hybrids whether they're plug-in or not. The nonplug-in's are just more efficient vehicles; not getting lower tax electricity from the grid. 

[samfp1943]

SD60MAC9500

Overmod

SD60MAC9500

Platooning could happen now, yet it doesn't as there's no cost or speed benefit.

 

 

You must not have spent very much time driving in the West, at least in the late 1970s or early 1990s.  I have experienced many instances of 'convoys' conducting close drafting, with far less than a typical car length between; in fact (with a little judicious 'clearing' and permission illegally arranged over the CB) I have run in them.  They are only borderline legal, and objectively unsafe as hell, but very real fuel conservation results from the reduction of head-end resistance even absent considerations that 'vacuum drafting' as NASCAR practices it has elements of a net zero-sum game.

The 70's were before my time. I've traveled a many road trips throughout the West; I-5, I-8, I-10, I-15, I-17, I-40, I-70, I-80. From the 90's on up till last year, and drafting was a rare occurence with rigs.. Platooning has been investigated by the large carriers the ROI has produced no added benefit. You get better fuel economy capturing as many loaded miles as possible vs empty miles. Instead of doing something as risky as drafting which on the CV side of the equation doesn't produce significant fuel savings. From my road experience both professional, and personal. Those who draft vehicles especially CV's don't take into account tires blowing out, road debris, and other road hazards where your time to react will lead to severe injury or death. .

Backshop

I'm still waiting for the "flying cars" that were supposed to be the norm by 1970.

 I hope that never happens.." People can't even operate their vehicles properly on the ground. "

 

        I have mostly, taken the position that each of us... Who come here to post our 'Takes', 'Ideas', and Experiences based on our job history, and those same life experiences.   All that ads much to the discussions and conversations  on this Forum.  So I am not wanting to point fingers, or verbally poke holes, in anyone else's postings.  

  I am sure, that at some point, in the future; A.I. and autonomous vehicles, of some sort will be seen on the roadways in this country.   As Backshop so deftly pouinted out.... People can't even operate their vehicles properly on the ground. "

  My background was in the OTR trucking, pretty much, nationwide, at times.  While our Interstate highway network is nationwide; there are a hell of a lot of of origins and destinatins that require safe operations, on at times, questionable(?) two lane roads.  Not to belabor the issue, BUT the quality of private vehicle  operatons leaves much to be desired.  A fact that is not improving, but seems to be deteriorating, as well.      Non of which bodes well for autonomous vehicle operations, IMHO.              To  'Ttrraafficc',  you need to re-examine your resources, and spend a few years navigating traffic in large, urban areas; as well as their highways and by-ways.         Then in a few years, come back, tell us what you have observed, and learned.  

[tree68]

Gramp

Wisconsin now charges a $75 annual license fee surcharge on hybrids whether they're plug-in or not. The nonplug-in's are just more efficient vehicles; not getting lower tax electricity from the grid. 

Given that some significant portion of the money for building and maintaing roads comes from gas taxes, I would opine it's a way to extract said tax from those who aren't paying it because they're not buying gas.

Energy is money.  If  you have a water source in your yard you could use to generate hydroelectric power (to charge your electric car), you'd still need to register the turbine with the feds.

[oltmannd]

Okay, sure.  Platooning, driverless, whatever.  RRs can drive labor productivity the same way.  One man crews.  Longer crew districts.  Automation of various places and operations like intermodal terminals.  

They can also electrify all sorts of machinery other than train operations including pickup and delivery dray, and become "energy source agnostic".

The trick is to get working on this stuff NOW, while you have the cash flow.  If you spend all your PSR generated cash by buying ice cream cones for shareholders, the game might be over before the ice cream starts to melt.

[Bruce D Gillings]

Generally, I think ttrraaffiicc is calling this one right. The existential threat to railroading – intermodal and non-unit train carload traffic – is real. It is not a singular event that will happen one day.  Rather, it is a creeping shift in how freight moves that has been going on since roads were paved, but that shift is accelerating. Take away bulk traffic and railroading is in deep trouble as a viable supply chain partner. Unless some structural changes occur in transportation policy in our nation, and the nature of investing in railroading changes, much of today’s railroading will disappear.

 

The challenges to converting the urban element of OTR trucking to anything other than “driver managed” will be extremely big.  But for the most part irrelevant. Urban OTR operations are essentially equal to urban intermodal drayage. Add in navigating a ramp area, and intermodal drayage is at a cost disadvantage to OTR urban trucking out the gate. The biggest Achilles heel for intermodal, prior to the implementation of PSR (an oxymoron if ever there was one), has always been the drayage factor. Where platooning, AV, and electric will change the cost equation dramatically is in the line-haul part of OTR trucking vs. railroading: the drayage problem won’t go away.

 

Historically, automation has been about replacing humans where tasks are repetitive and part of a linear process. The application of that to moving a vehicle of any kind over a distance has been fraught with too many variables. The AI revolution occurring now in manufacturing and logistics is profound: I have seen nothing like it in my 45 years of industrial design and construction (manufacturing, food processing, distribution centers). We are now in the early years of machines that can sense, differentiate, evaluate, learn, and “make” decisions. The process is becoming non-linear: it is about matrices of many, many processes functioning simultaneous (sorry, that’s as technical as I can get…).  As with any major change, there are errors, weak spots, even catastrophic failures, and there will be more. But as history shows, it is a matter of time. I can’t say if we are talking about a decade or two decades.  But no more than that. The brightest minds and biggest money are behind it: the stakes are high. The impact on transportation that I see is consistent with what ttrraaffiicc is saying. The only question is “when”?

 

There are other looming game changers. LCVs nationwide plus heavier loads (either axel loads or overall trailer loads through increased axels). In parts of the nation and Canada already heavier loads for specific commodities are allowed (ie: bulk raw milk in Wisconsin). And not just LCVs, but also simply allowing 57’ or 60’ trailers makes OTR far more competitive. Double stack is often at weight limits to the point where heavily-loaded domestic boxes need to be single-stacked if the combined loadings on a well exceed the loading on each bearing set of trucks. You can argue all you want about how our roads have too much truck traffic pounding them into terrible shape and that trucks don’t pay for them and the public won’t take it anymore. Sorry, the public is oblivious to those sorts of things and just wants to be entertained, not have to think. And the lobbying money on heavier and more trucks is not from the truckers themselves, it’s from the shippers – where all the money is. Politicians of both parties know that.

 

The obsession with the efficiency of steel wheels on steel rails vs. rubber tires on pavement ignores all of the inefficiencies that take that steel wheel advantage away. Circuity is a big one.  Poorly located ramps is another.  1800s and early 1900s mainline alignments that are civil engineering anachronisms (ie: roughly 300 miles of the 1100 miles between LA and Portland; most of the South).  Moving goods from shipping to receiving is more than just steel efficiencies: it is all of the components of the delivery process.  And now supply chain partners are monetizing the true cost of the unpredictability of rail, whether it is carload or intermodal.  And those “efficiencies” of steel wheels on steel rails disappear, and trucks become the more cost-effective mode in all but a few cases.