Technology

I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn't really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.

Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we'd get full truckload sized orders.

When it came to them, often "intermodal" shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.

As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.

However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.

It wasn't usually a drastic difference, we're talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren't many places in the US that we couldn't get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.

It always blew my mind that we didn't or couldn't push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.

I don't claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I'd think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn't anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time

Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.

Rail is used in the US. We just don't have as much rail infustructure so they can only get so far. If the port/factory/wearhouse aren't connect by rail then they'll have to use trucks for at least part of the transit.

Except that's rail only carries 16% of freight by weight and 2% of freight by value.

Pretty sure USA hates freight rail too.

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https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-846-november-10-2014-trucks-move-70-all-freight-weight-and-74-freight-value

But american freight trains are laughably bad too

https://youtu.be/AJ2keSJzYyY

They used to.

Bet that semi trucks are more expensive due to road damage and congestion alone.

That figure is without a human in the truck, not with a safety driver. I.E, they've done a bunch of testing beforehand.

Most rigs go at least 1,000,000 miles and that isn't isn't even end off life. You'll be paying not much less than new for a rig that only has 100k, that's practically brand new. These systems should have 100 million proven miles. These things weight 80,000lbs which can be very hazardous materials.

You should see the pile ups semis cause in low visibility. Even with really good lidar, I hesitant to say autonomous trucks can be safe running off independent systems on full mixed use roads.

We could add those systems to all roads to feed back to semis to know conditions and hazards miles before they reach them. We could build new smart roads for all autonomous vechilce to travel on separately.

Or we could just end the 100+ year old railroad cartel. Could move people and cargo with ease. But that isn't profitable.

I've seen plenty of youtube videos to know people are dumb enough to try this.

The resistance needs supplies!