Drivin' a truck with my high heels on....

[captpackrat]

I don't understand why so many companies transport goods by truck. Wouldn't it be cheaper to ship freight by train? Especially for long-haul? Why pay a truck driver to pull a load across the country when you could just load a cargo container onto a train? A single train, with just a few engineers, can pull thousands of trucks worth of goods, trucks which would require thousands of drivers, spew tons of pollution into the atmosphere, and take up space on the already conjested highways.

Is it a conspiracy by the oil companies? Is it because America is so car-centric? Has the American rail system deteriorated that badly?

Comments

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

It's because the train companies were aligned with the coal industry a century ago They bled their workers dry, they screwed their customers, and they were monopolies, so they got away with it. The workers eventually unionized but the companies just passed the hate on to their customers. What really did trains in though was the interstate highway system. Suddenly the shipping customers had an alternative and better yet, it was non-union. Highways are a major state kickback from the federal governement. Trucking companies don't have to maintain their shipping lanes (Unlike rail, which has no federal funds for interstate travel and is all privately maintained) And, because trucks are small, they can evvade a lot of pollution laws AND because it's billed as being all 'independent', truckers aren't as unionizable as train workers. It's one of those examples where capitalism just really doesn't work out best. Especially when one side is heavily government subsidized and the other is not. Of course, if the government quit subsidizing airlines, trains would also have more income. You're right. It would be much faster and more efficient to do most of your overland shipping by train, or, for that matter, helium-filled carbon-fiberframed solar-powered zepplins. and use trucks only for little hops at the ends where they're needed.

Our government just isn't as forward thinking as ... well... Pretty-much evey other country on the planet.