Except that nearly all US rail is for freight. We hate PASSENGER trains. We freaking love freight rail.
Comment on The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business
rtxn@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Americans will do anything to avoid just using trains.
fishos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
fishos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You’re looking at a different issue. I’m referring to passenger trains vs freight trains and you’re talking about freight trains vs semi trucks. I’m saying that the rail we do have, we overwhelmingly use for freight. It’s the primary reason we still have trains today in the US.
In regards to percentage of freight shipped by rail vs other means, I believe you that semis take a ton of that.
drmoose@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
But american freight trains are laughably bad too
fishos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yes, but “we will avoid trains no matter what” is blatantly false. It’s terrible, but it is our main method of shipping freight from ports to inland cities.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
And semi rigs are…personal transport?
fishos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
No, the subject is shipping cargo. Try to keep up.
nulluser@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You were the one that brought passengers into the conversation.
muusemuuse@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Trains help poor people too. We like to pretend we don’t have poor people. Makes them easier to ignore while pretending to be Christian.
Ulrich@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Trains are great but they don’t typically run to your local warehouse…
deranger@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
They used to.
turtlesareneat@discuss.online 4 weeks ago
Because the warehouse was built on the tracks. Alas that infrastructure tie-in has mostly gone away, new facilities are built with proximity to cheap labor, land, and easy to consume + pollute natural resources.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Maybe this type of automation could be improved by letting trains handle the long journey part:
Autonomous truck -> train -> autonomous truck
Then, the automated trucks (that could maybe be dispatched from rail networks when you have cargo to send) dont have to do the long distance part. Only the last couple miles each time from train to warehouse and vice versa.
I’m sure there are complications im missing, but at scale this sounds like a feasible plan
jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
They have, and they could again
FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Canals can be useful for this as well, Lowell MA used to have a huge industry all on waterfronts
Ulrich@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Could but don’t.
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Not much competition in railways. Like literally none.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
While I don’t necessarily disagree with you, trains are used here all the time, very specifically for this kind of thing.
AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Rail is used in the US. We just don’t have as much rail infustructure so they can only get so far. If the port/factory/wearhouse aren’t connect by rail then they’ll have to use trucks for at least part of the transit.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 4 weeks ago
Probably could have built a lot of rail for the cost of R&D on self-driving semis…
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I’m not so sure. Infrastructure is hella expensive and the US government already maintains the highways that make trucking make sense.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Maybe 2 or 3 single rail lines across the country.
You guys gotta remember that the US is double the size of the entire EU. I will say that I don’t disagree in that more rail would be nice, but you have to think about this logically.
Fondots@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn’t really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.
Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we’d get full truckload sized orders.
When it came to them, often “intermodal” shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.
As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.
However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.
It wasn’t usually a drastic difference, we’re talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren’t many places in the US that we couldn’t get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.
It always blew my mind that we didn’t or couldn’t push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.
I don’t claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I’d think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn’t anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time
Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Inventory became evil decades ago. “Just In Time” logistics became the norm instead of having warehoused inventory on hand. The beancounters all decided inventory was money that was sitting around not doing anything and maintaining the warehouse space cost more too. Can’t have those costs on the balance sheet. So speed in receiving smaller shipments more often is now the norm, along with ordering when you need them instead of ordering ahead of time, because some beancounter isn’t gonna be happy about extra inventory.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
as these tariffs start kicking in, companies are really going to regret not having local inventory.
futatorius@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
The beancounters are right about the costs. What they’re not right about is the risks. JIT supply chains are much more fragile, and to achieve some degree of resiliency, even sophisticated manufacturers will often mantain stockpiles of some critical goods. And things get even more funky when there’s only one good supplier for something, or the cost of switching suppliers is high.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
It’s always the fucking accountants.
Fondots@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Honestly, in that case it’s not even an inventory thing, just plan on ordering a couple days earlier and go for the longer slower shipping method so it ends up arriving on the same day. You don’t have to warehouse it any longer than if you ordered it later with faster shipping, and you save a decent chunk of cash.