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Comment by JimtheCoder | Hacker News Reader

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JimtheCoder

"If you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains."

Trains can only run on train tracks.

The tracks/train stations don't always go close to where the freight needs to go.

It is bordering on impossible to build new rail infrastructure to get freight where it needs to go.

It takes a lot longer to ship something on a train than on a truck.

Add on the fact that transport in general is getting more expensive, and I don't think more regulations on trucking is the right answer.

Just install the guards on the side of trailers and be done with it...

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Nothing is cheaper or more efficient and green then shipping by rail. We used to have an amazing rail network in NA (eu still does) and we basically have letf it fall into ruin and become a shell of what would constitute a functioning railway. It literally has done everything possible to kill passenger rail and make shipping via rail painful / unreliable.

If we had not trucking wouldn’t be the only option and we would be better for it

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNkYNjADoZg

The US shifts the same order of magnitude of goods by train as trucks

The EU shifts about 10 times by truck as by train

Rail freight in the US is praiseworthy.

> Rail freight in the US is praiseworthy.

watch the video and get back to me on that statement.

Actually US freight train system is ahead of EU. It's just the passenger system that's broken.

The US has a better freight rail system than the EU. It’s why passenger trains suck. We inverted the priorities.

Trucking is expensive. If you care about cost, you're gonna trade off time to use a more cost efficient method, like a train.

Where trucks do have the advantage is truckers though. You can saddle them with debt and take all their money as varying fees, then reposses their home and get some new rube to take out a loan to buy it from you.

The truckers are plentiful, and willing to bleed our for a couple crumbs, which is a much better deal than trains where the conductors are union employees. It's much harder to make them take out debt to pay you more

The answer is more, smaller, trucks / vans. If trucking creates jobs then a great way to create MORE jobs is to have smaller trucks. With smaller loads you lower the element of danger as well as lowering the barrier to entry. Additionally with smaller loads transfer's can be accomplished much more quickly with smaller equipment. Hot shot trucking is already pretty popular and typically works out to be cheaper. The idea overall idea would be an expansion of the interior ports network with loads small enough that drivers can self service.

>The answer is more, smaller, trucks / vans.

leading to more resource usage?

You just have a multimodal container, that you lift off a train car and onto an artic trailer.

This is a solved problem.

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