Times They Are A-Changin': Can Owner-Operators Keep Pace?

We'll see...This doomsaying has been going on for many years. I had a bumpersticker on my truck in 1974 that said "Don't track it, Truck it!". Even back in those days we were hearing that trucks were going to be phased out in favor of trains, For the same reasons that are being stated now...

Cheaper to ship be rail.
More efficient to ship by rail.
And all of the other "great reasons" that rail is the answer to all of our freight hauling needs.
It was nonsense then and it's nonsense now.
There will always be commodities that will be more compatible with being shipped on rails and there will always be commodities that can't be shipped on rail.

And....There will always be doomsayers that think the world is gonna end tomorrow regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.

 

I'm waiting to see if what my grandfather said comes true. He said, owner operators started this and owner operators will finish it

 

I crack up when I hear all the "rails gonna take over" theorist start yapping. My best friends father in law was a train engineer for a lot of years and is retired now. He said he laughs at that statement too. He was telling me that the rails used to lose so many cars that they would have millions of dollars worth of brand new automobiles on rail cars that they had no idea where they were at all the time. He said it would sometimes take them months to finally find them. He said it wasn't just cars either it was anything they hauled. He said stuff would go missing for long periods of time and sometimes they just never would find what they were looking for. If anyone thinks that this kind of "shift of freight" is the answer or is going to destroy the trucking industry all i can say is

 

Think a lot that has to do with what FMCSA said in their listening session in IA> They made the comment that more freight would be going on the rail and that most OTR jobs would be in the specialized and flatbed areas. Guess it depends on what side of the coin you want to look at

 

I'm with blackw900 on this. Spot on.

 

The day rail overtakes trucks....is the day every business and every house has a spur to it.....Ain't gonna happen.....

 

I have a old trucking magazine from the 50's that had an article in it that talked about owner operators would not be around in the future and were dying off. It didn't say how far in the future.

Have you seen the new commercial from CSX or something like that that shows a picture of two cars with an outline of a big truck in between them and they are saying more freight on rail is less big trucks on the highway.

 

The thing nobody on the "pro rails" side of the equation ever happens to mention is that something like 80% of the towns/communities in this nation have NO direct rail service. All that freight on those rails will be on a truck one way or another in order to get to it's destination, and like Working Class Patriot mentions, if a business has no rail spur to it trucks will be the final mode of transportation.

That being said, there is a lot of freight that can be railed then run regionally, and regional freight is the flavor of the month in this industry (see Schneider).

With CSA2010 long haul SOLO trucking is going to go the way of the Edsel. Shippers, especially multi-pick produce mixers, will be forced to load teams only in order to make delivery deadlines, if there are any deadlines to be made. A speaker at a safety meeting I was at a few weeks back said, regarding CSA2010, that shippers will eventually no longer be able to make appointment schedules, that the freight will show up when it can legally get there. We'll see.

As for the rails, let them have what they can handle. With modern technology maybe they won't lose so many rail cars for months at a time.........

 

Speaking of rail......
Back in the 20's-the early 50's, L.A. had a city rail system called the "Red Line".....
You could ride from Long beach to Downtown for a nickle....Then the automobiles took over and the city paved over the rails.....
Back in the late 80's...The city and Trans-Cal had a new rail system put in...

And hardly anyone uses it.....

The Green Line doesn't even go all the way to LAX.....it terminates S/O LAX in El Segundo....and to get to the airport...you have to get on a bus....

Makes fraking sense now does it?.....
That's Kommifornia for you though......