Railways are great for bulk transport of goods, but road trucking excels at smaller loads with finer-grained destination selection. The railway equivalent to wh

Railways are great for bulk transport of goods, but road trucking excels at smaller loads with finer-grained destination selection. The railway equivalent to what these trucks facilitate would be wagon-load freight, which is largely considered impractical in europe[0] and generally lost out to road trucking post war[1]. To explain why this isn't necessarily the case in america [0], it's important to understand that america didn't have a huge rebuilding effort post-war [1] that relocated industry away from the rail lines that had been servicing them for a hundred years. Post-war europe did have that rebuilding effort, and it saw a lot of medium industry spread out as the costs to remain in denser populated areas near rail hubs increase. Thus road networks became the feeders for these industries rather than proximity to rail freight depots and rail spurs. Maintaining wagon-load rail delivery in that environment became much more expensive as a result.