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by readthenotes1 1247 days ago
Pet peeve: every time I get on the interstate I think they should have driven 90% of the 18-wheelers on to a train.

Or at least have tracking software that fines them heavily for leaving the slow lanem

4 comments

Pet peeve: no matter what you do in a truck someone gets mad.

You’re either driving too fast or too slow. You try to stay in the slow lane but catch up to the person going 45 on the interstate who speeds up as soon as you get next to them trapping you in the fast lane until you give them ‘incentive’ to let you back over.

I could go on and on but my government mandated 30 break was over six minutes ago and there’s people to annoy on the two lane highway I get to drive on until Texas.

People are generally oblivious idiots, but I've also seen some truly insane truck drivers on I-84 in CT, stuff like tailgating people in the left lane at 70+ at night.
I’ve seen countless truly insane car drivers over the years where I honestly thought people were going to die. Some did die.

I’ve also have seen some truck crashes where I’m like “how is that even possible?”

The thing with truck drivers is the bad ones don’t last very long. It’s almost impossible to get another driving job after getting fired for being a shitty driver.

—edit—

And law enforcement holds professional drivers to a higher standard so there’s no talking your way out of a ticket if they see you doing something stupid. Most of the time that’s when they get all up into the logbook and full on level 1 DOT inspection on the truck.

Indeed, it's as if some truck drivers are guilty of the same bad behaviour as regular car drivers.
That’s rich coming from a 4wheeler. And why do you think they sometimes enter the fast lane? ( which is legal in many roads and some circumstances)
Isn't there a 'last mile' problem that differentiates trucks and rail?
Given the density of the US rail network it's rather more than "last mile", but yes - rail depots are not where you actually want the goods to be in most cases, and you need to do something about that. The question is more whether it would be more efficient to only truck goods as far as the nearest rail freight node and then have it shipped that way rather than via interstate. The article here suggests that's not viable because many vendors are shipping quantities that aren't economically viable given rail freight costs, but doesn't really address why that's the case.
While much more efficient, I believe freight trains are close to 100% capacity.
Then just add another lane, right?
Who?