RJ wrote:
There's some pretty smart people in this newsgroup.

Maybe someone can clear up this puzzler;

CSX ( railroad ) has been running TV ads that claim;

"We can move one ton of freight 486 miles
on ONE GALLON of fuel........."

I'm sure it's not an outright lie,
so how could they get these numbers ?

Maybe cars of the future should run on rails ??

AAR (Assoc American RR's) says the industry average in '07 was 436
miles/gallon overall based on mileage and consumption. The answer is as
another poster already pointed out--high payload makes the divisor quite
large/mile. Same effect as the miles/passenger mile in large commercial
aircraft--when divide by 300+ passengers, the hourly consumption goes
down on an individually basis quite rapidly as compared to an automobile.

The effect is most dramatically demonstrated if consider a 30 mpg car is
60 mi/passenger-mile when two are riding as opposed to only one.

--