9 ms·

I bet they're leaving out freight shipped on water.

• tzs 3y ago
  They are not. The modes the bts.gov page they cite breaks it down by are: Truck, Rail, Water, Air (including truck-air), Multiple modes and mail, Pipeline, Others and unknown, and no domestic mode. Tossing the data in a spreadsheet and figuring percentages, the percentages of the total for those modes are: 64.6, 9.8, 4.3, 0.0, 2.8. 17.1, 0.2, and 1.2. So 1.8 ratio of truck to non-truck, which is close enough to their claim that "In the United States, vehicles with tires carry twice as much freight as vehicles without them". Personally, I'd exclude "Pipeline" since I wouldn't count that as a "vehicle". With that excluded the ratio of truck freight to other freight is 3.5 to 1.
  • mckn1ght 3y ago
    I would definitely count pipelines as vehicles, for a few reasons: 1. it removes some need to use other vehicles, the same as any of the other transportation modes, and at quite high volume 2. it may be stationary, but still has “engines” in the form of pumping stations 3. it actually requires auxiliary vehicles for continued operation, in the form of employees traveling up and down the pipeline access roads in trucks or even with helicopters; this would be an interesting part of the calculation 4. there actually are movable parts of pipelines, called “pigs” in the transalaska pipeline: scrubbers that move up and down inside the pipeline, removing the solid material that accumulates on the interior walls They aren’t just a long piece of cylindrical metal sitting there passively.
• ponector 3y ago
  Btw, sea freight between US ports is not a thing due to legacy laws. Thousands ships you can see in the US ports are all for import/export of goods.
  • paddy_m 3y ago
    The Jones act.
  • thimkerbell 3y ago
    What was the rationale?
    • ponector 3y ago
      To protect domestic shipbuilding. As a result commercial shipbuilding also non-existent in USA.