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Comment by cbdumas | Hacker News Reader

> The model most are working toward is "hub to hub" not point to point. As in, A human driver drives the truck from the warehouse or port to a hub on the highway outside the city surface streets. Then they get out of the truck and pick up another one that needs to go back into the city.

What's the competitive advantage of this setup over a train?

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The thing about trains is that they gain cost efficiency in exchange for a massive time penalty. In most cases, you have to truck your goods from a warehouse to a rail center, unload them from the trailer to a rail car, wait for the entire train to be loaded and prepped, wait for a slot on the rail network, travel at normally ~45mph, and then do the reverse at the destination rail center. A trucking hub can swap a trailer in maybe 10 minutes and there's no need to group shipments together - you can send a single trailer load of stuff from point A to point B with minimal interruptions just like with a normal truck today.

I agree that's a concern from an investor's perspective. But:

1. You benefit from the massive subsidy America provides for road transport

2. You can serve places that don't have good rail connections

3. If you're moving standard trailers, your 'hubs' don't need costly build-out like cranes. Your MVP hub is just a car park - or maybe even just a quiet side street. So you can serve a town that needs 2 trucks/week, instead of only being able to serve towns that need 40 trucks/week.

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