If you have a load going from Miami to Montreal, it takes 26 to 28 hours by truck not the 6 to 8 days by rail. What method would you ship with. Deliver it to the railyard, load it into the rail car. Let it sit for a day or two until enough cars are hooked up for them to make a dollar going in the direction your load is going. Then change engines two or three times, breaking the train apart and reconnecting it back up to allow the cars that are changing directions to be sorted in or out. When it reaches the destination city, unload the railcar, load it into a truck for local delivery. Is that what you would call efficiency?
In 1973 took me 39 to 44 hours to drive from one coast to the other depending on my route and destination. It took a train 12 to 14 DAYS to do the same route. Which produce would you care to have on your table?
You’ve heard of Amtrak I’m sure. Well they have priority on the tracks over ALL freight shipments. Ever seen a freight train sit for four hours waiting for Amtrak to pass. Why? Because the freight train has up to 120 cars and is over a mile long, has unionized crews and paying them overtime is not the way to make money so the trains sit until they have the time and space to run without swapping crews or starting, stopping, starting, stopping, starting and stopping while they juggle track space with a bunch of tourists.
I am amazed that we even have figured out how to get a freight train from one coast to another and do it in less than two weeks AND make money doing it!
This is an example of how things work:
Day One:
The Walmart distribution center in Casa Grande, AZ notifies ACME Food Products in Buena Park, CA that they require replacement of sauces sold in the area stores.
ACME Food Products picks the products from the racks in their warehouse and notifies Streetway Trucking in La Mirada, CA that they will require a pick up.
The Streetway dispatcher notifies the Pickup and Delivery driver in the Buena Park run of the pickup.
THE ACME warehouse men palletize and wrap the products onto six pallets.
The Streetway driver picks up the pallets on his way back to the terminal.
The Streetway dock workers unload the pallets and load them onto a trailer destined for their Phoenix terminal along with many other shipments from and to many other customers.
A Streetway line driver hauls the trailer to Desert Center, CA where he swaps the trailer with a trailer headed for la Mirada brought there by a Phoenix line driver.
The Phoenix Streeway driver hauls the trailer brought by the La Mirada driver to the Phoenix terminal.
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Day Two:
The trailer arrives at the Phoenix Streetway terminal.
A Phoenix dock worker unloads the pallets and loads them into the Casa Grande run trailer.
The Casa Grande run P&D driver hauls the trailer to the Casa Grande Walmart distribution center.
The P&D driver sorts and segregates the cases of sauce.
A Walmart distribution center receiver checks the products in.
A Walmart fork lift driver puts the product up on the racks in their proper places where it is ready to be shipped to a Walmart store PERHAPS THAT SAME DAY.
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Can rail freight respond like that?