[corodra]

Rails don't go to every department store or grocery store. Don't go to any that I know of.

Rails are terrible for on-demand supply chain due to lag time for loading, unloading and then logistics to ship again on a truck anyways.

[ocschwar]

"Rails don't go to every department store or grocery store"

Bit of a self fullfilling prophecy there.

Lots of places around the world have rail slips going to the back of shopping malls.

The real reason is that 100 years ago the rail companies in America were so predatory and vicious to any customer trying to ship something smaller than a boxar's worth that the first generation of truck drivers were pretty much heroes for providing an alternative. The companies decided to stay in an inwardly looking economic niche and pretty much only ship slow moving multicar loads.

[magduf]

Containerization should have fixed the loading/unloading times decades ago. It should only take a few minutes to pick a container up off a railcar and hitch it up to a truck to be driven the last few miles to a store.