How is it better than trains again?
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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I wonder if this is gonna be like Waymo, where statistically speaking, the amount of cars that they had on the road, with how many crashes they had, it was deemed ineffective and dangerous, but as soon as they reduced the cars on the road they had less incidents because less odds. At this point, they probably continue to suck up subsidies and donar $ so they keep their little goofy business afloat. So what happens now? When It crashes into a school bus, who is held accountable? This is not a good idea. We need to tax the rich and corporations shouldn't have so much power. We didn't ask for this future. Anybody with a damn lick of sense knows that this is a stupid idea. Also, why? Like, just make more trains. America is so stupid. The fact that you just fight over cars versus walkable cities. I am actively trying to find a way out of here. These are horrific insanely stupid ideas. It's like doing it the hard way because you're too prideful to admit that you have a shitty infrastructure.I have seen Europe, I have experienced it, and it is far superior to the shitty infrastructure of the United States. I was born in America. I lived in America, but I do not identify with this way of life or culture. My head spins with just where people's minds are at in this country. How little they know. It's terrifying. If you're out there, just know. It is better elsewhere and chase those goals. You're not crazy. There's a better world. Not perfect, but a better world out there. Leave if you want to leave, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Good. No more freedom convoy MAGA base.
Both political parties are anti-union, anti-worker, and anti-American.
Ok then join the fight against the ones in power and shut the fuck up
Not after the first snowfall, they won’t.
Great, just in time for the number of shipments of imports needing to be distributed across the US to plummet...
ahhh yes, before he was Gustavo Frein, he was the dude killed by a video game in this
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Americans will do anything to avoid just using trains.
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.
Except that nearly all US rail is for freight. We hate PASSENGER trains. We freaking love freight rail.
Except that's rail only carries 16% of freight by weight and 2% of freight by value.
Pretty sure USA hates freight rail too.
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.
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While I don't necessarily disagree with you, trains are used here all the time specifically for long haul stuff.
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.
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Why not make automated trains with their own dedicated right of way?
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As of Thursday, the company’s self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck.
That's not an impressive number. That's like 2 days' worth of driving.
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Great... I can't wait to be hit by one of those on my motorcycle
I'd actually bet they're safer than some tweaked out dude on his 20th hour at the wheel.
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