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by dsnuh 2883 days ago
The trucking industry is many many times larger than the rail freight industry in America.
3 comments

It'd be nice if we had some more rail expansion. Rails are so efficient, and are just more impressive mechanically the entire system is like a giant computer with actual switches. There was an article posted here a while ago about how rare train accidents are and how incredibly fail safe those systems are.
That's mostly because of:

1. (As others have mentioned) a lot of freight is intermodal so containers in particular shipped for long distances by train also travel by truck for the first and last X miles.

2. A lot of freight is relatively local in nature, so it makes more sense for it not to be intermodal.

The trucking industry and rail freight industry overlap extensively, in the form of intermodal freight
Right, I never said they didn't. But the trucking industry is still by far the main mode of moving freight within the US.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/the-staggering-statistics-be...