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In some ways, you describe freight rail. Freight rail in the United States is great. We use it a lot more than Europe (probably about 4x more) and the fuel ef
by mdasen 13y ago
In some ways, you describe freight rail. Freight rail in the United States is great. We use it a lot more than Europe (probably about 4x more) and the fuel efficiency gains are huge for freight rail. It isn't self-driving, but it is on dedicated tracks with minimal people needed given the long length that trains can be.
I think this is the reason why the industry doesn't seem to care: they do care, but they've already invested in freight rail which is even more efficient. It's going to be hard to beat freight rail's efficiency and at what cost? Trucking does have greater flexibility and is needed to do shorter distances and last-mile stuff, but we already have fuel-efficient trucks on their own truckways: it's freight rail.
- tod222 13y agoYes, and the trucking industry stopped fighting freight rail years ago and now makes use of it. Trucks are more flexible, sure, but to get that flexibility they trade off operating efficiency. This is why many long haul trucking companies such as J.B. Hunt [1] and even UPS [2] now make use of intermodal shipping. [3] It's not commonly known that packages sent via UPS Ground frequently travel on trains. As a general rule, UPS Ground packages traveling long distances across the U.S. are shipped by train. [4] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Hunt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Hunt [2] http://www.ups-scs.com/transportation/rail.html http://www.ups-scs.com/transportation/rail.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport [4] http://compass.ups.com/processes-of-package-in-transit/ http://compass.ups.com/processes-of-package-in-transit/