dadiOH wrote:
gas wrote:

On the other hand, shifting distribution to send freight by train to
major population centers (or freight centers), and the serving local
areas by truck from these freight centers would drastically improve
energy consumption, ...
snip

Another possibility too: ship the trailers by train (like ship containers),
off load where needed, pick up a tractor and driver.

Don't watch many trains go by, do you? Around here, that is already
dirt-common. There are sea-train boxes delivered to factories and
industrial parks around here that haven't been opened since they left
China or wherever. Don't know the handling steps on that end, but here
in CONUS they are offloaded in a port, many times directly to
purpose-built rail cars, and go cross-country by train to nearest rail
yard set up to pull them off and drop them on a matching semitrailer. I
understand some big factories with their own rail spurs can even offload
the containers directly from the trains.

--
aem sends...