“Pennies on the dollar” seems pretty reasonable to me.
Over a 250 mile stretch, a 40 ton tractor trailer will use 40gal of diesel at $4/gal and pay a driver $100, for a total of $260.
A diesel electric train uses 25gal to move 40 tons 250 miles (according to CSX commercials, anyway). This is $100 for 250 miles by train.
So this means tractor trailers are 2.5x more expensive than trains. It costs about 50 cents per KWH to generate electricity from diesel. But centrally generated electricity is much cheaper than generating it from diesel on board a train.
The proposed electric tractors would be running on grid electricity at 10 cents per KWH, and would be 5x cheaper than diesel electric trains. So a total factor of 12.5x cheaper than tractor trailers.
That means 8 pennies on the dollar.
Maintenance costs per electric are nothing compared to diesel trucks. The only advantage trucks have is they don’t have to build their own roads while the monorails need to be built.
You are neglecting capital costs and Maintenance of Way costs and taxes.
OK, trucks in most states can carry 80,000lbs-truck tare of 10,000 = 70,000 # of load. At 7 mpg, that is 245 ton-miles / gal.
So, rail is ~ 2x more fuel efficient than trucks.
More to follow.