If the railroads where run by competent people, would they still be moving freight across the country in trux

Question

Truck trailers, pulled behind those big diesel trucks? Would'nt it be way more effiecient if they put 2 sets of wheels on them , one for roads. another for rails. Then the trux could tow the trailer from the factory to the local railroad station, and hookup the trailers to a freight train. When the train got to the other town, then they could pull the trailer on the street with another truck. they could have 50 trailers pulled by 1 locomotive that never has to stop at an intersection or gets stuck in traffic.

Answer 1

Actually, that has been done, via the "Road Railers" of the Swift Trucking Company.  It ran dedicated service trains on the I-5 corridor many moons ago, in the early '90s, before the SP was sold out.

The trailers each had a bogey behind the highway wheels and each trainer had an eyelet kind of affair that hooked onto the trailer in front, which hooked on to the next, and so on.  The first trailer had an adapter, for lack of a better term, that had the actual coupler on the end for the locomotive to couple up to.

It proved impracticable.  TOFC or COFC is the only way to go.  Some of the "trailers" you see aren't trailers at all, in the usual understanding.  Rather, they are "containers" that are universal in size, shape, location of securing devices, etc.  Truly adaptable, your new hair dryer is made in China, loaded into a container that moves by highway to a sea port, the container gets loaded onto a ship and heads east.

It arrive on the shores of the US, is unloaded and put onto a flat car, that will move it across the country, where it will then be loaded onto a highway trailer chassis for transportation to final destination.

But I am sure many will question the implication that those who work for railroads are incompetent.  There are actually one or two railroaders who can chew bubblegum and walk at the same time without tripping or choking.

The rest of us run the trains...

Answer 2

So you have 50 trucks take their trailers to a rail yard, you then have another 50 down the line to pick them up. Already you have doubled the number of trucks on the road, and who is going to pay for the extra costs, you the consumer.

Answer 3

yes

Answer 4

Unfortunately, what you've said is impossible to do. The extra weight on the vehicles alone would do damage.

The main way in Europe is to have low loaders (barely 0.5m from rail height) which are linked in a long line, with buffers at the end of the rake only. The flexibility of the system means that any combination of vehicles is possible (e.g. for splitting at junctions, where 1 section goes one way and the other section another).

The other problem is cost - even if it did succeed, who would pay for it? Lorry/haulage companies are hardly going to but equipment that needs specialist treatment unless forced to, or unless there will be long term benefits.

Until the meantime, it's container flats I'm afraid

Answer 5

I starred your question, it shows you are thinking, but that idea has been tried before.

Trucking industry is heavily subsidized, the trucking lobby is one of the most powerful in the nation.

An average over the road truck through it's fuel taxes pays roughly 70% of the actual road damage it causes, the rest  is subsidized by us.

As stated above, road-railers were tried before, it was not real practical.

I am going to slap myself for sayingt his but for the most part railorads are run by reasonably competent people but we are NOT competing with trucks on a level playing field.

Answer 6

TOFC, trailers on flat cars is one way of doing this and its been around for decades.  You have some excellent answers already.

Answer 7

I can't add much that hasn't been said except the railroads are run by mostly competent people.Back in the eighties the railroads(the SP at least)ran off a lot of business because all they wanted to haul was intermodal.In the process of doing that they forced a lot of shippers to go back to trucking their products.We ran off a major source or revenue that we never got back.

Hey Bob... I've progressed to being able to chew bubblegum ,walking and talking all at the same time! My mom would be proud of me! lol

Answer 8

Tipper-

There are actually two different ways the truck trailers are moved on the Railroad.  

By the same token, there are also several different variety of rolling stock to handle this equipment.

This part if the industry is called Intermodal Logisitcs.  

The truck trailers that are equipped with fixed wheels are slowly being phased out on the Rail Lines.  Mainly because it takes more specilaized equipment to handle these trailers, but it also takes more time for crews to lock these trailers to the rail equipment to move them.  So you are going to start seeing less and less of these truck trailers being used.

What the railroads mainly handle are the Intermodal Containers.  These containers have a fixed set of dimensions so they can be handles with a minimum of equipment and moved very quickly.  These containers can be either reefers, (refridgerated), or just a plain steel lock box.

I live in the bay area, and have been down to the Oakland Ship Yards and watched Intermodal Well Cars being loaded and unloaded.

Let me give you a good example.  Next time you see a train go by at a crossing, start paying close attention to the equipment as its going by.  You will notice a rail car(s) that have two truck looking trailers stacked on top of each other.  Maybe you have seen names on them like Maersk, Hyundai, Samsung, or lost of other names.

Yep, you guessed it, those are the same truck trailers that you see on the highway sometimes.  How??

The trucks are using a special trailer frame that is designed to handle those "Containers".

Here are a couple of other pieces of trivia for you too.

Did you know that all of the Diesel Locomotives since the 1930's are hybrids??

Yep!

There is no physical connection from the "engine" inside the locomotive to the drive wheels to make the train move.

There is a large 12 or 16 cylinder Diesel Engine connected to either a large DC Generator, (660 Volts), or a large Alternator, (660 VAC).  There is also a large bank of batteries, then the power is sent down to the drive motors of the wheels.  Now here is the really neat thing.

Ok so you see a train go by and there is 5 locomotives at the head.  All of these are connected via a MU Cable, (Multi-Unit Cable).  This connects all of the computer systems together and the 5 locomotives are syncronized into one locomotive, with the combined pulling effort of 5 units.

The reality of trains though, is they are limited as to where the rails go, start and end.  So the railroads and trucking industries work hand in hand to get the freight delivered.  Trucks are hindered, by the fact they have severe weight restrictions.  Trains can haul 10 to 20 times what one truck can in one Box Car.

If you live in the Bay Area, or along a coast line, find out where your nearest shipyard is and ask if you can take a tour of the place to see how the operation works.

Better yet, if you have a look at Netflix,  They probably have a copy of one of my favorite programs.  Its a program put out by National Geographic Magazine called "Love Those Trains".  If memory serves me, they have some footage in there about the intermodal industry.

Good Luck!

Answer 9

A plain simple answer is YES!

There are too many people who are involed in the goverment who are also paid by other people in the Oil Industry.

Answer 10

sounds good but

too expensive, the loads are so heavy the vehicles you describe would have to have complicated and expensive running gear.

stuff breaks down, needs repairs.

railroads across the country are in need of major repairs.

I have a friend that's retired from the Highway Dept.

he says 90 to 95% of all the bridges in the US are in need of major repairs.

they just are not spending the money to keep them maintained properly.

Answer 11

Trucks are okay for small loads. Trains are better for longer distances and bigger containerised loads from ships. Also, oil is better transported by train because of the smoother ride, and transfer of oil from ship to train, then to depot, then to truck for the shorter distance to filling stations.

Answer 12

they kind of do that when possible. they will put a truck trailer on a flat car to go long distances. but to get to a specific location the trailer usually needs to be driven by truck. also for relatively short hauls, it is much more time efficient to just drive instead of taking to a rail yard, loading, transiting, unloading, and then driving again. usually it comes down to time constraints or economics.

i agree with you it would be much better for traffic if there were fewer trucks but not all locations are served by rail. believe it or not rail transport is improving.