Economics of freight (trucks and rail)

Road Construction and Road Upkeep are paid by someone although often we would see these high road taxes paid by trucks no one ever mentioned the road taxes in comparison to the damage caused by them.

Does the USA manufacture anything or merely assemble and ship?

Does the flexibility of the trucking industry really compare with the fixed rates and locations of the railroads. Railroads may be cheaper but if they don't want to make up a train promptly a shipper will always go to a trucking company instead.

Quote: FleaStiff

Does the USA manufacture anything or merely assemble and ship?

One example I found right here on Long Island is Pigtronix which used to have their stuff made in China but recently brought it all back to Port Jefferson, NY.

I've heard that some manufacturers have gotten tired of the Manana attitudes found abroad and the arbitrary taxation by local officials. Just in time inventory practices don't mesh too well with Manana and a culture of saying "Yes" all the time.

I've heard this is limited to smaller manufacturers/

Quote: s2dbaker

You can get from Erie, PA to Stockbridge, MA (Alice's Restaurant) and pay no tolls. It will only cost you an extra 10 minutes. New Yorkers know this.

If your goal is to just drive across the state this works. You can also cross PA via I-80 depending on where you are coming from and then swing north and do much the same thing. But as anyone who lived upstate/WNY knows, the Thruway is not there to be the fastest way across, it is there to connect the principal cities of NY. The Thruway follows the path ot cross-state RRs which follow the path of the Erie Canal which is why NY has a weird cluster of cities along the Thruway and is largely empty below.

As an example of the Thruway's inefficiency at crossing the stae take a trip from Rochester to Long Island as an example. It has to be the only trip in the USA where you go through 2 states to get back to the same state you started in! It is shorter to go Rochester to Syracuse, then south to Scranton, then East to NJ, then through NYC to LI.

Quote: AZDuffman

And while NY to LA might make sense for some freight, most shipments are more regional.

Not in US. Sure, there are lots of pizza deliveries in-town. But US is a large country and most everything else is first shipped interstate. Every time you have a fully loaded semi-trailer truck doing overnight stops, it's a job that should have been handled by rail. As it is in countries that have well-developed rail networks.

Railroads are cheaper to build and incomparably cheaper to maintain, particularly when carrying heavy loads.
Buses are indeed a better choice for passenger transport.

Quote: P90

it's a job that should have been handled by rail. As it is in countries that have well-developed rail networks.
Railroads are cheaper to build and incomparably cheaper to maintain, particularly when carrying heavy loads.

Some sort of conspiracy perhaps that companies could ship by railroad but simply want to pay more to ship their items?

Quote: P90

Not in US. Sure, there are lots of pizza deliveries in-town. But US is a large country and most everything else is first shipped interstate. Every time you have a fully loaded semi-trailer truck doing overnight stops, it's a job that should have been handled by rail. As it is in countries that have well-developed rail networks.

Oh not at all. The industry phrase is "LTL" or "Less than Loadfull." Most of the majors like Yellow-Roadway-Ryder are based on this concept. A boxcar can take about twice as much as a 53' van-trailer. So to make sense you have to fill twice as much space to start. Then you have to wait for the train to leave. Say a steel fabricator needs some new dies becauese the old ones are broken. To wait a day might cost them $200K or more. What are you going to do, wait a day to get a train car then let the train drive 45 mph then wait a day for unloading 100 cars, then you have to move it possibly a few hundred miles from the rail yard to your plant. OR do you tell your best driver team to hitch-up to bay 10 and deliver to XYZ Street in XYZ City?

Shippers use rail when it is feasable and cost-effective. Sometimes it is. Rail works for coal, ethanol, and intermodal shipping containers. But if you need it there fast you call a freight forwarder who calls a trucking company who consolidates your pallet with 21 others and the driver might stop at all 21 places.

Fully loaded does not mean one pickup and one dropoff.

Quote: FleaStiff

Some sort of conspiracy perhaps that companies could ship by railroad but simply want to pay more to ship their items?

You have to pay if you want to build a rail line. That's an investment cost. Roads don't cost anything, they are built and repaired for free.

Quote: AZDuffman

Say a steel fabricator needs some new dies becauese the old ones are broken. To wait a day might cost them $200K or more. What are you going to do, wait a day to get a train car then let the train drive 45 mph then wait a day for unloading 100 cars, then you have to move it possibly a few hundred miles from the rail yard to your plant.

Any serious industrial facility has its tooling pipelined - procurement budgeting, procurement itself, logistics, supplies, installation, inspections, phase out. They don't run around the office waving their hands in the air when a tool fails inspection, they increase the next order by 1 while taking one out of the supplies hangar a little sooner than scheduled. You do use a truck to do it, though.

Wait a day for steel casting dies? In a dream. Try a couple weeks. If your order isn't something special and if the maker isn't loaded with orders as it is. You're lucky that you just need steel casting dies, these are easy to make. If you needed a power transformer, the waiting list is currently about 40 months.

And if you're in steel production, the rail yard is just part of your yard. You have to ship in several 1,000s tons of coal, iron, then send off your castings, each job warrants a rail line.

Hey, no one said pizza huts need rail.

Quote: AZDuffman

But if you need it there fast you call a freight forwarder who calls a trucking company who consolidates your pallet with 21 others and the driver might stop at all 21 places.

Eh, no. If it's something small, you need it fast, and your whole business stands without it, you can as well drop whatever you're doing and go get it yourself. Your freight forwarder and a non-dedicated truck - that you have to let drive 55 mph because it's a truck - will add another day or two to the delivery, though not quite the three or four that a non-dedicated rail line would.

Your example is in between - it's for when you need something somewhat soon, but not very soon, and/or it's bigger than a E-class trunk, but not too big to fit on a pallet.

Heavy trucks are generally in between. They don't have the flexibility, speed and convenience of a pickup truck or a van; and they don't have the sheer capacity, the long-range performance (trains drive day and night, no rest stops) and the durability of rail lines. So they have a role they fit perfectly, and they still work below and above. But using them as a plug for every hole is sheer waste. As would be using rail or light trucks everywhere of course.

I will post more when I have more time. We can say that it is safe to assume that P90 is misled. There is a place for rail cargo, but it has nowhere near the flexibility of OTR trucks. Try fitting one pallet of freight in a car. Anyway, once I have completed my task of putting a train engineer out of work this morning, I will post further.

Quote: AZDuffman

Trains are more efficient if all of the people and freight are all going from one place to one other place.

No, that's only when there is exactly one train. When there are several trains, you can afford some diversity.

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Consider freight. It must be loaded at a central yard and consolodated. This takes time, time is money with Just-In-Time delivery now the norm.

Loading in a central place does not take very much of either time or money. Yes, there is some overhead, but think about how many trucks you would have to run to replace a single freight train.

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And while NY to LA might make sense for some freight, most shipments are more regional. The train-advantages dissapear.

No, they do not. Regional or not, pretty much any long haul truck route is more expensive and less efficient than a train.
Doesn't have to be NY to LA. Boston to Bangor, or NY to AC would be jut fine. Even within a single state, it would often times make a lot of sense, provided that the infrastructure is in place.

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It is just as bad for people. Either many marginal stations must be built or stops must be further apart.

Think about it. How bad is it for people in Europe? In Asia? Pretty much, everywhere else?
It is not. It works out just fine. Yes, you need many stations, but it is the same as saying that cars don't work, because they require parking.

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And the schedule must make sense.

No argument here :)

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I used to drive all over NY, but I had to get from my office to the customer's place. For most people, being met at the station is not an option.

There are usually a few options in countries with developed public transportation systems. Take a bus. Use a shuttle. Get a taxi.
Having to drive 40 miles each way because the place you need to be is not located exactly at the train station is too ... Amercian.

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If trains were so good, they would not have been driven to near-extinction by 1970.

It does not always work that way, unfortunately. You can't expect "free market" to build rail roads for you. There was a bunch of bad decisions made in the past, that looked like a good idea short term, but do not quite work for the long run. And now is about the time we are starting to realize that.

You actually need twice as many trucks. Takes a truck to move the trailer from the shipper to the railhead. It takes another truck from the railhead to the consignee. Unfortunately, there is not a rail yard at every customer, so a truck is needed. Trains are only an option if there is no hurry to get the trailer to a customer. Average coast to coast time on the rail is 10-14 days. A train doesn't run 24 hours a day, they are subject to DOT Hours of Service regulation just as trucks are. A trailer has to be at the rail yard 1-3 days ahead of the trains departure, and it will take 1-3 days before it can be picked up after the train arrives. A single driver can go from NY to LA is 5 days, legally. A team can do it in 2 1/2 days. If time wasn't a consideration, trains would be great. we do not live in that world. An average WalMart DC gets over 600 truckloads of goods each day. That freight is on the shelf at a store within 48 hours of receipt at the DC. Freight type is also a consideration. Fresh produce doesn't go over the rail. It would be inedible by the time it reached the shelved. A tomato picked in Arizona is on the shelf in NY within 5 days. Trains cannot handle that time frame.

Trucks carry 99.9% of ALL goods that are purchased in the US. Like it or not, they are here to stay. The country, as it is now, would shut down without the trucking industry, completely. There is no argument about this.

Now.....if all interstate highways were tolled, wouldn't hurt the trucking industry much. It may put some independent drivers out of business, just like $4+ diesel did a couple of years ago. The cost would be passed on to the consumer. You would pay more at the register. Unlike regular passenger cars and trucks however, we have to pay Heavy Use Tax and Road Tax for every mile, in every state, that we travel. Plus, we pay a tax on every gallon of diesel purchased (somewhere around 37 cents federal, states vary). Trucks, and the trucking industry, pay the lions share into the Highway Trust Fund. Roads are not free.

Be happy knowing that there are 3 million trucks in the country to provide you with the quality of life that you are used to. Without them, and me, life would really suck.

And, as a side note, if you call the guy in his E class to come and pick up some freight for you and deliver it across town, it is quite possible that he is breaking the law. He probably doesn't have authority to move commercial intrastate goods. And he most likely will not have authority to move goods across state lines for hire. Perhaps one should look in to the cost of getting DOT Authority to move goods. The costs are rather high.

Edit: You should really not take too much stock in the BNSF Railroad commercials that run on PBS and NPR. Statistics can be used all sorts of ways to show nothing. I think they say they can move a ton of freight 430 miles on one gallon of diesel. Laughable.

Quote: P90

Wait a day for steel casting dies? In a dream. Try a couple weeks. If your order isn't something special and if the maker isn't loaded with orders as it is. You're lucky that you just need steel casting dies, these are easy to make. If you needed a power transformer, the waiting list is currently about 40 months.

Just using it as an example. The example could be anyting. I tries out for an operations job at a refreactory providor. For those who do not know, refreactories are stone that has a high temp tolerance thay you pour the molten steel into since you cannot pour molten steel into steel. Anyways, the steel mills did likely keep a safety stock in supply, but when they needed one they needed one. Anything could happen. They were small enough to fit on 1-4 pallets. And the mill wanted to do the work when they were shut for maintainence. So on a truk it went.

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Eh, no. If it's something small, you need it fast, and your whole business stands without it, you can as well drop whatever you're doing and go get it yourself. Your freight forwarder and a non-dedicated truck - that you have to let drive 55 mph because it's a truck - will add another day or two to the delivery, though not quite the three or four that a non-dedicated rail line would.

Your example is in between - it's for when you need something somewhat soon, but not very soon, and/or it's bigger than a E-class trunk, but not too big to fit on a pallet.

Heavy trucks are generally in between. They don't have the flexibility, speed and convenience of a pickup truck or a van; and they don't have the sheer capacity, the long-range performance (trains drive day and night, no rest stops) and the durability of rail lines. So they have a role they fit perfectly, and they still work below and above. But using them as a plug for every hole is sheer waste. As would be using rail or light trucks everywhere of course.

Uh, you are missing the point and do not seem to understand how trucking works. Say I need to move 2 pallets worth from St Louis to Buffalo. I'm not going to go to U-Haul and rent an Econoline Van and pay a driver for that trip. I'm going to call my forwarder and say, "I need two pallets moved, I'm faxing over a bill of lading, call me with a price." Meanwhile 10 other people need pallets moved between St Louis and Syracuse. The forwarder calls one of his truckers and tells him where to pick it all up and drop it all off. 2.5 days later we all get our various freight. For a train it would take that long just to do the loading and unloading.

Trains do use less energy per mile-ton. However, that does not make them a better choice for most. Trains work if you have large, predictable, homogenous shipping needs.

Quote: P90

Not in US. Sure, there are lots of pizza deliveries in-town. But US is a large country and most everything else is first shipped interstate. Every time you have a fully loaded semi-trailer truck doing overnight stops, it's a job that should have been handled by rail. As it is in countries that have well-developed rail networks.

Railroads are cheaper to build and incomparably cheaper to maintain, particularly when carrying heavy loads.
Buses are indeed a better choice for passenger transport.

"Interstate" does not mean coast-to-coast. A single driver, IIRC, must take 10 hours off after driving 11 hours. Assuming an average of 50-60 mph, that is just 550 miles. Then you will see them in the sleeper cab. That is best-case, assuming he picks up the load at the start of his day. Far more possible is he dropped a load and hitched up another during the day.

In simple terms, if rail was more efficient for the shipper then the shipper would be using it. Clearly the flexibility of trucks is better for most. This might confuse people who do not ship but think of what is better in the faculty lounge, like our current administration who is goo-goo for rail.

Quote: avargov

You actually need twice as many trucks. Takes a truck to move the trailer from the shipper to the railhead. It takes another truck from the railhead to the consignee.

Doesn't. A truck is not a series of tubes. A truck can do ~10 local trips in a day, vs 0.5 trips for one overnight stay journey. So you need - let's say at 5 trips a day - 0.2 as many trucks if you're using truck+rail+truck to move goods over one overnight stay journey distance. That distance is a legal maximum of 11*55*2=1,210 miles. More realistically, anything over 1,000 miles.

Quote: avargov

If time wasn't a consideration, trains would be great. we do not live in that world. An average WalMart DC gets over 600 truckloads of goods each day.

And that Walmart gets mostly the same goods each week. Winchester 9x19mm Para are as good and as needed today as they were last week, and will be as good the next week.

If we lived in a world where everything is delivered in a rush, we wouldn't have container ships and would be airlifting everything.

Quote: avargov

Edit: You should really not take too much stock in the BNSF Railroad commercials that run on PBS and NPR. Statistics can be used all sorts of ways to show nothing. I think they say they can move a ton of freight 430 miles on one gallon of diesel. Laughable.

Let's see.

Take a modest train, 50 cars, 60 tons per car - 3,000 tons of cargo per train.
A 50-car freight can be pulled by a 4-5 MW loco.
That engine will consume about 180 g/kWh.
Tractive effort is about 4 lbs/t, for higher speeds 5 lbs/t, so for a 4.5 kiloton train you need about 10 tons.
Cruise power is a fraction of full power, at 45 mph it's P=T*v or 100 kN*20m/s=2 MW.
2 MW*180g/kWh is 360kg/hr or 800 lbs or about 110 gallons per hour.
110 gallons to move 3,000 tons 45 miles is 110/135,000~=0.001 gallon per ton-mile.
Actually it's moving 1 ton of freight 1227 miles on one gallon of fuel.

Where did I go wrong?
Oh, right. I looked up your "I think they say ... laughable".
The truth is, they didn't "say they can move 430 ton-miles per gallon". They said, quote - "In 2009, CSX trains averaged 468 miles per gallon per ton." Same for 2010.

That's hard practical numbers. 230 trillion ton-miles of cargo delivered, half a billion gallons used. A lot of the time these trains ran empty, or partially loaded, or at inefficient speeds, or were older stock with less efficient engines, or, whatever. So the average over everything was 468 ton-miles/gallon, rather than 1,000+ that a fully loaded train can do.

Quote: AZDuffman

"Interstate" does not mean coast-to-coast. A single driver, IIRC, must take 10 hours off after driving 11 hours. Assuming an average of 50-60 mph, that is just 550 miles. Then you will see them in the sleeper cab. That is best-case, assuming he picks up the load at the start of his day. Far more possible is he dropped a load and hitched up another during the day.

In simple terms, if rail was more efficient for the shipper then the shipper would be using it. Clearly the flexibility of trucks is better for most. This might confuse people who do not ship but think of what is better in the faculty lounge, like our current administration who is goo-goo for rail.

In further simpler terms, no one ships goods from Mongolia to Afghanistan by sea freight.
What could be the reason? Is sea freight so expensive there?

You use what is available. Truck services are available. Rail services - well....
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_46a.html
In 2003, the last year for which data is available, rail delivered 1.55 trillion ton-miles of freight, intercity trucking 1.26. Trillion and a half of ton-miles is hardly nothing.

But, back to our Mongolia-Afghanistan example, you don't ship by sea freight because they are friggin' landlocked and there's no sea to ship by.
Rail takes money to build. Not a lot of money, but that's money, initial investment, opportunity costs.
Roads don't take money to build. Like grazelands and forests, they are naturally created by Earth's processes.
You just need the trucks, and with cheap and abundant fuel, there's little reason to look for anything else.

Imagine getting more than 250 miles to the gallon out of your SUV. It would be possible if your SUV were riding on the rails. Railroads move one ton of freight an average of 423 miles on a single gallon of diesel fuel. They are three times more fuel-efficient than long-haul trucks, in fact. Better yet, over the past 25 years, freight trains have increased their fuel efficiency by 80 percent. But BNSF isn’t stopping there. Since 1996 alone, we've increased our fuel mileage by 11 percent.

Taken from BNSF website:

https://www.bnsf.com/communities/environmental/fuel_efficiency.html

Taken from P90:

The truth is, they didn't "say they can move 430 ton-miles per gallon". They said, quote - "In 2009, CSX trains averaged 468 miles per gallon per ton." Same for 2010.

Taken from avargov:

I think they say they can move a ton of freight 430 miles on one gallon of diesel.

The other assertions are not even worth my time. It is obvious that you have been in the transportation industry. 605 miles per day as the legal limit, ridiculous. I routinely travel 690-710 LEGALLY. Only two states where trucks are limited to 55 mph, Cali and Oregon. Most western states are at 75 mph. 10 local trips per day, insane, but you obviously are aware of the 14 hour rule as well, right? Trains haul what they can, the rest MUST go by truck. This is a JIT world we live in brother. Bulk freight is a different story, and that is the lions share of the total freight base that you quoted. Apples to oranges. Loose coal isn't hauled effectively by truck, it is by rail. Lettuce isn't hauled effectively by rail, it is by truck.

And, one last thing, where would you build all these new rails to service existing customer? Just curious.

Quote: avargov

Taken from BNSF website: (...430...)
Taken from P90:
The truth is, they didn't "say they can move 430 ton-miles per gallon". They said, quote - "In 2009, CSX trains averaged 468 miles per gallon per ton." Same for 2010.

Correct. Do you see an inconsistency here? Look up my quote in google cache (CSX website is nonresponsive). CSX and BNSF are different companies.

You dismissed the claim that "they can move a ton of freight 430 miles on one gallon of diesel" as "Laughable". My calculation showed that such a claim would in fact be gross understatement, as a train can move over 1,000 ton-miles on one gallon.

Indeed, CSX averaged 468 in 2009, and that's average including all empty hauls, just total fuel spent divided by total ton-miles. A newer BNSF page - http://www.bnsf.com/communities/bnsf-and-the-environment/ - currently claims 495, presumably due to improvement over time (oldest stock retired).

Quote: avargov

Trains haul what they can, the rest MUST go by truck. This is a JIT world we live in brother. Bulk freight is a different story, and that is the lions share of the total freight base that you quoted.

Well, it's not a JIT world if you go by ton-miles. It may be by delivery count.

And, to the first point, not quite.
Approximately 33% of rail ton-miles and 41% of truck ton-miles are considered mutually competitive. That is, 33% of rail and 41% of truck cargo can be reasonably carried by either mode of transportation. So their relative demand is cost-elastic.

But rail transport operates on its own. Rail companies have to buy land, prepare it, build tracks, only then operate. Trucks are de-facto subsidized by taxpayers, as they use public roads. Aside from being freed from upfront costs (taxes are only paid after profit is received, not before the road is built), they cause a disproportionate proportion of road deterioration, driving maintenance costs, but don't pull their weight in taxes. These two factors are a major advantage in competing on price.

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But rail transport operates on its own. Rail companies have to buy land, prepare it, build tracks, only then operate. Trucks are de-facto subsidized by taxpayers, as they use public roads. Aside from being freed from upfront costs (taxes are only paid after profit is received, not before the road is built), they cause a disproportionate proportion of road deterioration, driving maintenance costs, but don't pull their weight in taxes. These two factors are a major advantage in competing on price.

Trucks don't pull their weight in taxes? I would avoid saying that at a truck stop. I would say it is safe to say an Otr truck pays $2k per month or more in taxes.

You're right, I am wrong.

My truck only averages 304 miles per ton per gallon (40 tons x 7.6 mpg average). That is far less efficient. Trucking companies pay no use tax at all. We get all of our funding from the taxpayer. We should all be shut down. What was I thinking! I think I shall find my nearest BNSF rail yard and donate a portion of my check to help them with their capital investments. I shall also, today, request audience with the owner of my facility (which is NOT a trucking company, I do not work for a trucking company) and advise him that all of our freight should be immediately transferred to the rail. Then I will head to the employment office and get my 99 weeks of handouts. As will over 3 million other drivers.

How could I have been so blind. Of course, the federal highway system will fall into much deeper disrepair. Since there will be no trucks to pay heavy use tax, road tax, IFTA, registration fees, yearly fees for authorities, fuel tax, etc. Oh wait, we don't pay taxes, we are de-facto subsidized.

BTW, are the inconsistencies that you referenced the same as the inconsistencies that were there when you told me I was wrong when I used BNSF as a reference in the first place?

And is this the same CSX that is building a railyard in Winter Haven that is being subsidized by Florida? Seems like the taxpayer is losing on that one.

Quote: AZDuffman

Trucks don't pull their weight in taxes? I would avoid saying that at a truck stop. I would say it is safe to say an Otr truck pays $2k per month or more in taxes.

Easily Duff....easily.

Quote: avargov

My truck only averages 304 miles per ton per gallon (40 tons x 7.6 mpg average).

You drive with 40 tons of cargo all the time - really? Full load both ways, never go empty, never drive with just 39 tons?

And how did you get a permit to exceed the 80,000 lbs GVWR limit? If your truck weighs anything, say 1 lbs, you are over the limit every time you drive with 40 tons of cargo.

Because the figure for rail is only net cargo delivered divided by total fuel use.
To produce a figure for comparison, take your total year's fuel use, including all empty runs, nothing subtracted, and divide ton-miles of commercial cargo delivered by that number.

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BTW, are the inconsistencies that you referenced

Not inconsistencies. Older page and newer page, that's all.

Quote: AZDuffman

Trucks don't pull their weight in taxes?

In road taxes specifically, AFAIK not. It's the cost of building and maintaining roads where trucking gets effectively subsidized but rail has to pay the full cost upfront.

No, or course not, but neither does the train. And they used empty and deadhead figures in there average. Apples to apples it seems.

I would ask that you research the taxes that an average truck pays. Just the tax on a gallon of diesel is on average 53.8 cents. An average truck buys 2000 gallons per month. That's $1076 per month. Multiply that by the number of trucks (approx 2.4 million Class 8 trucks) = $2.52B per month. Per month!!!! And we don't carry our weight?

There are many subsidies that are given to railroad companies to make capital improvements.

Indeed, CSX averaged 468 in 2009, and that's average including all empty hauls, just total fuel spent divided by total ton-miles. A newer BNSF page - http://www.bnsf.com/communities/bnsf-and-the-environment/ - currently claims 495, presumably due to improvement over time (oldest stock retired).

Your own figures state that it includes empty hauls. Of course I am not always 80,000. Just like the train is not always full either. And their figures include the weight of the train.

Quote: avargov

No, or course not, but neither does the train. And they used empty and deadhead figures in there average. Apples to apples it seems.

Apples to oranges still. The figure for trains is calculated by dividing ton-miles of commercial cargo delivered, not empty train weight. And dividing it by the total amount of fuel that the company bought for their trains. 230 billion ton-miles of cargo divided by 490 million gallons.

Say, if in a year you made 1000 deliveries, each was 20 tons, each was for 100 miles one way (return trip doesn't count), and in that year you poured a total of 20,000 gallons of fuel into your fuel tank (regardless what for), the number would be 1000*20*100/20,000=100 ton-miles per gallon.
If deliveries were 15 tons average, you clocked 160,000 miles, half of them loaded with cargo, and used 2000*12=24,000 gallons, that would be 50 ton-miles per gallon.

Taking your figures of 2,000 gallons per month and 2.4 million trucks, with estimated 1.5 quadrillion truck ton-miles (last known is 1.26) would give 1,500,000/(2.4*2,000*11)=28 ton-miles per gallon as nationwide average, although that's by far not an accurate figure and probably lowballed due to local deliveries.

Quote: avargov

I would ask that you research the taxes that an average truck pays. Just the tax on a gallon of diesel is on average 53.8 cents. An average truck buys 2000 gallons per month. That's $1076 per month.

An train can eat 2,000 gallons in two-days (delivering more ton-miles than a truck does in a year in the process). Does their diesel come tax-exempt? If not, they're paying this tax too.

Quote: avargov

Your own figures state that it includes empty hauls. Of course I am not always 80,000. Just like the train is not always full either. And their figures include the weight of the train.

Empty hauls fuel use is included. But these hauls don't contribute to cargo ton-miles.

I don't see where they include train weight. BNSF specifically states "ton of freight":

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A BNSF train can move one ton of freight 495 miles on just one gallon of diesel fuel.

CSX states:

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Here is the formula for our 2009 fuel efficiency rating: (From the 2009 R-1 Report)

Schedule 750, Fuel consumed (freight + switching) = 446,999,921 gallons
Schedule 755, line 110, Revenue Ton-Miles = 209,248,946,000 RTM
RTM per gallon = (209,248,946,000 RTM / 446,999,921 gals) = 468 RTM/gal

All fuel is calculated, but only revenue, i.e. paying ton-miles. Not tare weight.

Quote: P90

An train can eat 2,000 gallons in two-days (delivering more ton-miles than a truck does in a year in the process). Does their diesel come tax-exempt? If not, they're paying this tax too.

Too late in the evening to look it up, but I will bet that the train does not pay the same level as the truck since it is a "road fuel tax." A quick google shows the answer is that they do not.

AZ and AG:

Both of you are "right".

Trucks have thier place in the transportation system, as do railroads.

The government builds the roads in this country, either the county, state or Feds. They use the tax on gallons of gas and diesel sold to fund the construction, and then later the upkeep.

Its true that the railroad companies fund thier own maintenance. Except that wehn most of the railroad systems were constructed in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the various levels of governments GAVE the railroads the land to build on. As well as mineral rights, and "easy" terms for funding to build many lines.

The current construction in Winter Haven, is probrobly being supported by the State of Florida to get the rails out of the way someplace else, so that the State can use that land. The railroads should be compensated when the land is taken from them.

Here in Maryland, when the railroads abandon the tracks, the railroads can't "sell" the railroad land to anyone else, it is taken over by the state, and then the state decides what to do to with it. That was part of the "deal" to get the land to build them.

Much freight on trucks COULD be carried by rail, but much of the freight on rail could not be carried by truck. The coal moved by train could never move across the highways, the costs would be too great. A unit train of 110 coal cars with 100 tons of coal each would take 275 trucks, and out of the Powder River Basin in WY, they have about 20-25 trains like that leaving each DAY.

You have the local delivery of stuff, that will never happen by rail. Any frieght that travels over 1,000 miles and does not have a time sensitive component, CAN be shipped by rail, or at least intermodal. And it doesn't take the railroads 10 days to cross the country, it takes 3. Its just getting the trailers to the intermodal yard on time at each end. Many container ships sail from China/Japan to Washington State and deliver trailers that travel across the country and get on ships to Europe. A little more expensive, but faster than sailing all the way around the world....

The freight goes where it is most economical to do it. If the truck driver suddenly wanted to get paid three times MORE than they were getting, and it applied across the board, MUCH frieght would move to the railroads. Just if the reverse was true.

It isn't that trucks are better than trains, its just simple economics...

SFB

Quote: SFB

AZ and AG:

Both of you are "right".

Trucks have thier place in the transportation system, as do railroads.

I agree with that. My issue is RR diehards think cost per ton-mile is the only determining thing. Clearly it is not. It seems to me rail is good for shippers with large, predictable loads. With the exception of cars, RR is better mostly for raw materials as coal, ore, oil, or scrap. That and loanding an intermodal on top to ship imports coast-to-coast. For a smaller loan not so much as the loading/unloading just kills the benefit.

Quote:

Here in Maryland, when the railroads abandon the tracks, the railroads can't "sell" the railroad land to anyone else, it is taken over by the state, and then the state decides what to do to with it. That was part of the "deal" to get the land to build them.

My understanding is RRs rarely "own" the land the tracks travel over, at least in the east. In PA much of this land was acquired by "right-of-way." When rails-to-trails came about some owners said "NO" not wanting the traffic. Their logic was that ROWs are written so they can be used "forever" but only if they are bsing used. Abadon the track and you lose your ROW. The state forced the issue with the owners. In the west, where large RR grants happened 1840-1890ish more land is owned.

RR ROWs are a big deal with the shale gas plays. Good source of revenue if you let a pipeline share your ROW.

Both will have a place for a long long time. It help RR a lot in the US that it is such a large area of land. We don't have all manufacturing just on the coasts so there is a lot of raw materials heading inland.


I don't know if the recent recession caused problems in the plan, but there was a ~$70 billion project for a tunnel between Russia and Alaska. Some pipelines and some rail tracks. You don't spend 70 billion if it isn't very economical to use rail for some things. :)


As others have mentioned though, there will always be a use for some sort of transportation that is quicker. I'm not going to accept a shipment from Amazon that uses a train to get to me. Raw materials are just not economical to ship via trucks. I'm guessing trucking a shipment of coal would use more energy than is generated in the coal plant it heads to. Trucking all the wheat/corn we use would increase the prices of food significantly.

Quote: AZDuffman

I agree with that. My issue is RR diehards think cost per ton-mile is the only determining thing.

Well, where are these diehards?

Because, like I said, 33% of rail and 41% of truck freight is modally competitive.
That is, 67% of rail freight would be impossible or near-impossible to deliver by truck. For instance, major rail freight corridors operate at 100+ trains/day, averaging about 90 cars. That's 30,000-50,000 big trucks - existing roads would be jammed dead by the traffic.
59% of truck freight would be impossible or near-impossible to deliver by rail. There may be no rail line, or the cargo may be needed too quickly, or the trip may be too short, or the quantity too small to use rail.

The other 33% of rail cargo, a bit over 500 billion ton-miles, and 41% of truck cargo - also a bit over 500 billion ton-miles - can be reasonably delivered by either service. It will not overload truck weight limits, it will not perish in rail cars, it's not due yesterday.
That is a quadrillion ton-miles of freight that we can make a choice about.

There is more cargo delivered every year, it's easily at least 1100 billion by now. And there are reasons, not fully included in internal costs, why it's preferable to get more of these extra ton-miles picked up by rail.
For one there is traffic. Rail capacity is limited primarily only by traffic control, and it does not compete with civilians for public road space.
Then there's fuel use. Per figures above, fuel economy can be put at about 500 ton-miles/gallon for rail and about 50 for truck. That's, respectively, 1 billion gallons and 10 billion gallons per year.

Moving all of the modally competitive cargo one way or the other is obviously not an option. But if the distribution is changed, for instance, by 25% - it will save, given allowance for local truck transport, about 4 billion gallons a year. That's equivalent to the difference in fuel consumption between 10,000,000 Porsche 997s and 10,000,000 Toyota Priuses.

And that's where my concern is. Let's save liquid fuel where it affects our quality of life the least, such as in moving modally competitive cargo, and leave it for where it counts. That and keep more room on the highways.

Quote: AZD

I agree with that. My issue is RR diehards think cost per ton-mile is the only determining thing.

Quote: P90

Well, where are these diehards?

Because, like I said, 33% of rail and 41% of truck freight is modally competitive.

The cost per ton-mile IS the determining factor. That is economics.

If you have a built in inherent cost advantage, your competitors are toast.

And railroads DO have an advantage. Not in every form of delivery, but in the markets that they can be successful in, just like truck dominate in other markets.

SFB

Quote: SFB

The cost per ton-mile IS the determining factor. That is economics.

If you have a built in inherent cost advantage, your competitors are toast.

No, cost is not the determining factor. It is *a* factor. I won't repeat what we have already said, but time and flexibility are also determining factors.

If cost was the only factor, Wal-Mart would be the only retailer. They would never update their stores, channeling all savings to keep prices low.

Clearly that is not the case. WMT does remodel stores from time to time, and many consumers choose the place that is closer, faster, or just more inviting.

If cost was the only factor, Yugo would have been as big as GM

We all know how that turned out.


I agree it is good to have a built-in cost advantage, but it is not the only thing. When I was in pest control we got the best price on materials, vehicles, and often labor. Locals creamed us regularly. Why? Because if a customer wanted something the owner could make an instant decision. For us to make a change took what we called "an act of congress."

Flexibility counts.

Quote: AZDuffman

No, cost is not the determining factor. It is *a* factor. I won't repeat what we have already said, but time and flexibility are also determining factors.

If cost was the only factor, Wal-Mart would be the only retailer. They would never update their stores, channeling all savings to keep prices low.

Clearly that is not the case. WMT does remodel stores from time to time, and many consumers choose the place that is closer, faster, or just more inviting.

If cost was the only factor, Yugo would have been as big as GM

We all know how that turned out.


I agree it is good to have a built-in cost advantage, but it is not the only thing. When I was in pest control we got the best price on materials, vehicles, and often labor. Locals creamed us regularly. Why? Because if a customer wanted something the owner could make an instant decision. For us to make a change took what we called "an act of congress."

Flexibility counts.

Flexibilty counts, it is one part of the cost.

IF I have ten folks ready to go at any one time to perform a job, then that has costs, if they are not working. Someone who is by themselves, can be alot cheaper, but may not get to you in a week.

All things considered, the rails will beat the costs of transporting large, bulky things long distances over trucks. But if water-borne transport is available, the railroads lose out.

Because, in spite of the lower cost of rail-miles over trucks, water-borne freight is still much cheaper....

When you start adding flexibility or speed to the equation, the numbers change, and therefore the costs.

SFB