I never can find a clear cut answer on this question. What exactly is the share of freight that railroads haul in the U.S.
For example; I find information that 43% of the freight in this country is moved by rail, but that is measured in Tons per miles, and for some reason gets translated into 43% of intercity freight.
Now I find information that when it comes to actual tonnage, I see rail has either a 10, 15, 18, 20, or 30 percent share of freight in this country vs. anywhere from 60-70% is hauled by truck. I also do not understand that trucking figure either. Is that 60-70% of freight that is moved by truck exclusive or does that include the same freight that can be hauled on other modes? Such as 10 billion tons of freight is moved by truck and 2 billion tons is moved by rail in this country. How much of that 10 billion moved by trucks is in the 2 billion moved by rail or vise versa?
Also I get confused about comparing the U.S. roads to Europe. Although the U.S. roads may move more tonnage of freight, do they have less market share when compared to European roads? I see railroads in European countries can have a market share up into the 20% range and if any the numbers above are correct, then the European roads have greater market dominance, even with high speed rail.
I am just flat out confused and any clarification and links to credible information will be greatly appreciated.
Remember, too, that a lot of freight is transhipped…loaded and unloaded several times by the same and different modes. Also, there are trucks and containers which are carried by rail which would show ovelapping accounting… So what is real?..Santa Clause.
Well I am really looking for actual total tonnage of freight in the country that is hauled by rail. Even if the market share is only 30%, what exactly is that 30% comprised of? I mean there is a difference if the local cement company is factored into the total tonnage hauled in this country which would include the microwave you buy at target which may have been on a train at some point.
It really seems that measuring in tons-miles is really “cheating” when it comes to displaying the total share of freight in the country; if I understand the concept correctly.
The only useful measures are ton-miles and revenue. Consider one ton of grain loaded into a truck on a farm and hauled to a local elevator, where it is loaded into a train which hauls it to a barge terminal where it is loaded into a barge to be moved to an export terminal. One ton of grain would be counted as 3 total tons of freight moved, one by each mode used.
The question really is what is the relevance of the tonnage figure. Very short moves of freight by truck will skew the tonnage figure. Every bit of coal that is mined in the Powder River Basin is moved by a truck, not very far, but once the shovel or loader picks it up it is dropped first into a truck.
Based on ton-miles the US railroads are in the low 40% range, European railways averaged altogether would be about 20%, note that the European average comes about from Spain and Ireland about 1 - 2 % while countries like Lithuania and Ukraine about 45%, all the way to Switzerland’s 60.5%, so lots of variation in Europe. Eastern European countries with poorer road networks and more bulk materials moved will have higher rail market share. Switzerland is a special case with the population not wanting to share their roads with any more trucks than necessary.
So the 60-70% freight that is moved by truck is not exclusive to only being moved by truck?
Ton-miles is moving the x amount of freight a certain amount of miles at once, correct? I just can never really understand how that is a reliable figure to use when deciding market share of freight. I mean when it comes to ton-miles, the U.S. roads move 43% of the nation’s freight, but when it comes down to actual tonnage it is more in the 10, 15, or 20% range.
The tonnage figures are never exclusive, but remember that very large amounts of freight move very short distances, things like concrete from a batch plant, sand and gravel from a quarry, the asphalt to pave a highway, etc. These things add up fast in the tonnage figure, but much slower in the ton-mile figure because it is very expensive to move a low value product very far by highway.
Ton-miles has a correlation with costs and revenue. Which would you expect to pay more for, 10,000 tons of coal moved one mile or the same amount moved 1000 miles. 1 mile = 10,000 ton-miles, 1000 miles = 10 million ton-miles.
IMHO the ton miles of each DOT commodity group is a much better metric. That way the use of trucks, barges, pipelines or other modes is balanced out.
However the movement of the empty cars, trucks, barges, etc shouod also be counted some how.
Actually the tare weights of various modes also needs to be taken into account so the use of containers on a train has the tare weight of the container and tare weight of the well car or other conveyance. What you put the cntainer also needs calculation.
Does that muddy the water enough or do you want more?
EDIT: Then there is the weight of the locos, truck tractors, barge tugs, airplanes, etc
Basically answered a critical part of my question. Thanks
blue streak 1:
It makes it a little muddier. [%-)]
I do not know how the weight of the equipment is necessary for figuring out market share of freight.
I guess I am really trying to figure out if the railroads shutdown their operations would we notice? In the store, at the lumber yard, etc.
It is hard to put up an argument that railroads are still important in our lives when you can not say for sure if they played a roll in your lives outside of powering your home.
Value is the total value of the freight itself, by transportation mode.
Tons is the total tons loaded onto each mode. Some of those tons might move 1,000 feet from origin to destination, while others might move 1,000 miles, but they all count the same.
That information did help. I am confused with the multimodal figure although. I figured the Truck-Rail would be hire unless that is strictly intermodal.
As far as the economy stalling out. One begs the question as to whether or not the country would survive without intermodal service with the rails. Is it really hard to see not much of a difference if intermodal service was terminated?
If every plane can be grounded on 9/11 and simply put everything over to trucks, then can it not be just as easily done with rail in many cases?
It is not like I do not think the economy would stall, I just do not see how it would be hard for trucking to move the freight. I mean once it all settles in, is my trip to the store going to be affected? Will I still be able to get gas?
Well they were only grounded for a handful of days and very little cargo was unloaded. I remember this from having just moved into a new place. I had lots of stuff in transit that I didn’t arrive until a week later than I was supposed to. Including my paycheck that was stranded somewhere in a FedEx plane.
When orange juice in the Northeast is suddenly really expensive, you’d notice.
Where would the Drivers, the trucks, and the additional fuel come from? Things like bread, margarine, cooking oil, sanitary paper, detergents, all would start being in short supply quite quickly.
If you look at the numbers from the first table Railway Man linked you would see that Rail and Truck generated about the same number of Ton-miles, what that tells you is that to move the freight moved by rail you would have to double the number of trucks and double the number of Drivers and you would need more fuel, think about the highway congestion, think about twice the rate of highway wear and the resulting need to repave and rebuild. Think about the higher cost for everything you buy because the cost of fuel would go up.
I did some quick math to see how much money it would cost the U.S. economy to convert all the rail ton-miles to truck ton-miles. Using truck costs per ton-mile vs. rail costs per ton-mile, and making assumptions about empty backhauls and support costs, we get to about 500 billion dollars in direct shipper cost increases per year to convert rail-carried freight to truck. Adding in infrastructure costs and impacts, probably another 500 billion a year.
BT CPSO 266, a question for you to consider is what would happen to the U.S. economy if you overnight subtracted $1 trillion a year from its $14 trillion economy.
US railroads are handling an average of about 30,000 trailer and container loads per day. Keeping in mind that railroads rarely get intermodal business with a line haul of less than 500 miles and a very big part of that traffic is import containers moving from west coast ports to the midwest and south, I’d guess that the average haul is around a thousand miles. With that haul, I put the average truck turn at three days. If railroads were to suddenly shut down all intermodal operations, conservatively, it would require 90,000 tractors to handle the business. Tractors can run around the clock, but drivers can’t. So add to the mix the need for at least another 100,000 drivers. Good luck with that. Finally, Don’t forget to order a lot of new boggies for the container business.
If you want to go further and just leave the unit train business, mostly coal, on the rails, you had better plan on another 50,000 truckloads a day for the rest of the carload business. Don’t forget to order up the trailers for the business.
Jay, I think you’re being optimistic – do you really think a single tractor/driver can do a 1,000 mile turn in 3 days? For international intermodal, there is a lot of empty return miles.
For carload, I think it’s even worse – most cars are loaded to 100 net tons, which means 4 trucks per carload in most states, and turn times will be terrible because most shippers and receivers are not set up to load and unload promptly upon arrival.
beaulieu: So the worst would be in highway congestion and repairs. I am trying to think if the taxpayers and costumers are willing to pay more for faster service.
I am more thinking of a scenario that would take place over time and not in just one day. Not to mention if the trucking lobby actually succeeds and gets bigger & multiple trailers approved for highway use?
Railway Man: The second paragraph I directed towards beaulieu also applies here. Not to mention subtracting 1 trillion from 14 trillion is only a 7% drop in output. Is that enough to cause major concern if one is not focused on total output and just providing a functioning economy?
jeaton: So what happens when the Panama Canal is finished in 2015? The distance could become a lto shorter and have a major impact on the international containers traversing the country. Not to mention what is that 30,000 trailers and containers being compared to? The same goes for those 50,000 carloads; which also sound low to me. I mean adding 50,000 to 400,000 is not a marginal increase. Plus my second paragraph that is addressed to beaulieu applies here as well.
Your right. Not so good at back of the envelope as I used to be, but even with my low ball, the numbers are quite big. With the required background and the relatively low pay, I hear that trucking companies now have a hard time getting drivers. How would they find and train even a hundred thousand new drivers? And then there would be the cost of new equipment.
Your note of at least a half trillion dollar increase in the cost to haul everything by truck illustrates the absurdity of the idea.
As you and I both know, it takes a considerable amount of planning effort and often a big investment for a shipper, receiver or truck line to get set up to use rail service. The choice between the use of rail and other modes is mainly driven by a cost analysis, which in addition to a comparison of freight rates, now often includes all distribution costs. My perception is that this is resulting in a gain for rail share. Why would a business’ transportation manager change a modal choice if it was not in the interest of his employer?