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Report: Railroads gained market share in 2011
The trucking industry is going to continue to have chronic shortages of drivers, and companies that do not intermodalize are going to be squeezed out.
Owner/ops are dropping like dead flies over fuel costs, and some drivers are under this false guise that they will make more money if the speed limits are raised, when in essecnce, they are adding more wear and tear to their vehicles and burning up more fuel. The industry is also shooting themselves in the foot lobbying for the extended trailer lengths and weight limits which will no doubt bring increased wear and tear on the bridges and roadways, as well as rendering more roads obsolete on the account of their sizes.
Double/triple trailers ought to be banned. The smaller trailers like 28 footers are fine for making deliveries in the cities with tight turns and narrow alleyways, but in a sense, two or more trailers are a trackless train, regardless of trailer lengths, and need to be on rails. Multiple trailers have a tendency to fishtail. I’ve noticed that when roads are icey or during a heavy rainfall.
Since the bigger trucks will require expensive retrofits to our nation’s highways, this burden will be passed onto the trucking industry in higher fuel taxes, increased tolls, and other fees which in turn, will also hurt consumers in increased costs of goods sold.
Shippers are trying to hold down the costs of freight and materical handling charges. Each time freight is moved from one vehicle into another, that increases the likelihood of the material being damaged, lost, or stolen. Some trucking companies have freight transferred between vehicles enroute as many as three or four times. In containers, material is only handled at the shipper and the receiver. When these containers are stacked properly up against themselves on railroad flat cars and surrounded by a floor structuring around the bottom of the containers, they will be extremely difficult for a thief to break into them enroute unless the thief has a cutting torch to remove a