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Comment by justsomehnguy | Hacker News Reader

> aerodynamic improvements can save quite a bit of money

If there were any significant amount of a saved money then a 'brick style' tractors like Peterbilt 389 [0] would be long gone purely by economical factors. It's still a brick on wheels which pushes a multi-ton load.

It's more a combination of a lack of a meaningful train system, an overall spareness of the cities and the roads and a male appendage measuring cont^W^W^W^W history and customs around the trucks[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Peterbilt_Semi-Tractor.jp... It was introduced in 2007.

EDIT:

[1] heh: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44479293

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> lack of a meaningful train system

The US moves the most freight by rail in the world; seems meaningful…

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/highest-railway-cargo-tr...

The problem of course is that during WWII, every narrow gauge feeder line of less than 100 miles length in the U.S. was pulled up and shipped to Europe for the war effort --- after the war, there was little effort made to rebuild them (the big 3 focusing on the individually owned car and so forth) --- remember this the next time a European boasts about their wonderful rail system:

https://armyhistory.org/railroaders-in-olive-drab-the-milita...

Wow that link is a treasure. Thank you.

I have read quite a bit about WWII from a European perspective but I never read anything that even touched on those aspects.

Thanks for the interesting link. Where can I read more about the dismantling of feeder lines ? All I can find is that narrow gauge was closing down or being replaced and their steel used in the war. Can't see a concerted effort though.

That's a good question --- I've looked for further information on this off-and-on myself.

FWIW, that link notes that over 25,000 miles of track was shipped overseas for the war effort.

The specific example I am aware of was several counties/county seats connected to a small town was 94 miles in length.

sigh

Yes, it moves a lot. Because there are 300m+ people there[0]. But if you just search for a 'USA train network' and compare that to a 'Europe train network' it would be pretty self evident.

Also take a note of the cargo distribution of the US train traffic in the link you provided yourself:

>> Of all the rail cargo, approximately 91% is made up of agriculture and energy products, vehicles and parts, construction materials, coal, chemicals, food, metal, minerals, and paper.

Most of it is not transported by the trucks in the first place. And what matters the most is what you need a proper network distribution so you only haul the last 50-100kms on the trucks, instead of the "trips [what] can take several days at high speeds"[1]

So you brought the wrong metric in the numbers measuring contest.

[0] and let's ignore what China and Russia has a quite comparable numbers of tonne-kilometers: 2.525, 2.518, 2.222.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44479968

I looked up "USA train network" and a map showing a high density of rails across the continental U.S. was one of the first results. It was as dense, or denser, than the comparable European networks.

But the U.S. train networks primarily serve cargo; the passenger rail network is quite sparse. This is because people in the U.S. prefer to fly or drive or taking the train given the vast distances involved between major cities. (London to Paris is about equal to the distance between LA and Vegas but significantly shorter than the distance between LA and SF.)

> It's more a combination of a lack of a meaningful train system

Doesn't the USA have the world's largest and most cost-effective rail freight network? This seems meaningful.

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