Comments on: Trucking Industry Likes Higher Fuel Prices — When They Help Truckers http://dc.streetsblog.org/2009/10/29/trucking-industry-likes-higher-fuel-prices-when-they-help-truckers/ Your daily source for national transportation policy news and analysis. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:57:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Clayton Boyce ATA http://dc.streetsblog.org/2009/10/29/trucking-industry-likes-higher-fuel-prices-when-they-help-truckers/comment-page-1/#comment-87771 Clayton Boyce ATA Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:20:15 +0000 http://dc.streetsblog.org/?p=43171#comment-87771 Elana Schor has a warped view of truck vs. rail competition. First, the trucking industry is the rail industry’s biggest customer. When a trucking company has a load that can go by rail cheaper and better, the trucking company puts that load on the rails through its railroad or intermodal company partners. Second, trucking does not fear competition from railroads. Railroads do not go to 80 percent of the communities in the U.S. And the cost of land and construction, not to mention community opposition, will keep the rail network from being expanded to handle a large increase in freight. Rail expansion is limited to short connectors, multi-tracking of existing lines, and raising clearance heights to allow stacking of containers. In fact, the only way that railroads could expand in a big way would be to tear up all the walking and bicycling trails that have been created out of abandoned railroad lines and put ties and rails back down. Who is in favor of eliminating these bicycling routes? For the 20 percent of the U.S. communities that railroads do go to, trucking is rated much higher in quality, speed, performance and reliability than railroads. The trucking industry sees railroads as a vital part of the intermodal network and predicts that both trucking and rail will continue to increase the amount of freight they haul. Railroads will however remain the mode of choice for heavy, bulk freight such as grain, sand, coal and gravel, while trucking is the mode of choice for everything else. Ms. Schor promotes electrified freight railroads as a panacea but any rail expert or railroad executive will tell you that electrifying freight railroads across the country is a financial impossibility. Ms. Schor’s criticism of the trucking industry for offering to pay more taxes is nonsensical. The trucking industry is volunteering to give the federal government more money to support public infrastructure that is used by and benefits all Americans. It is fair for the trucking industry to set limits so that the money is not spent on museums and other non-highway projects. Compare that to what the railroads are doing. Railroads are spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get it to give rails a tax benefit worth 25 percent of what railroads spend to improve their own property. Those are your tax dollars being used to improve corporate property that you cannot use unless you pay the railroads for the pleasure. In the real world, trucks and railroads work together to bring you what you need to live. Theoretically trucking could exist without railroads, but railroads could not exist without trucking. Elana Schor has a warped view of truck vs. rail competition. First, the trucking industry is the rail industry’s biggest customer. When a trucking company has a load that can go by rail cheaper and better, the trucking company puts that load on the rails through its railroad or intermodal company partners. Second, trucking does not fear competition from railroads. Railroads do not go to 80 percent of the communities in the U.S.

And the cost of land and construction, not to mention community opposition, will keep the rail network from being expanded to handle a large increase in freight. Rail expansion is limited to short connectors, multi-tracking of existing lines, and raising clearance heights to allow stacking of containers. In fact, the only way that railroads could expand in a big way would be to tear up all the walking and bicycling trails that have been created out of abandoned railroad lines and put ties and rails back down. Who is in favor of eliminating these bicycling routes?

For the 20 percent of the U.S. communities that railroads do go to, trucking is rated much higher in quality, speed, performance and reliability than railroads. The trucking industry sees railroads as a vital part of the intermodal network and predicts that both trucking and rail will continue to increase the amount of freight they haul. Railroads will however remain the mode of choice for heavy, bulk freight such as grain, sand, coal and gravel, while trucking is the mode of choice for everything else.

Ms. Schor promotes electrified freight railroads as a panacea but any rail expert or railroad executive will tell you that electrifying freight railroads across the country is a financial impossibility.

Ms. Schor’s criticism of the trucking industry for offering to pay more taxes is nonsensical. The trucking industry is volunteering to give the federal government more money to support public infrastructure that is used by and benefits all Americans. It is fair for the trucking industry to set limits so that the money is not spent on museums and other non-highway projects. Compare that to what the railroads are doing. Railroads are spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get it to give rails a tax benefit worth 25 percent of what railroads spend to improve their own property. Those are your tax dollars being used to improve corporate property that you cannot use unless you pay the railroads for the pleasure.

In the real world, trucks and railroads work together to bring you what you need to live. Theoretically trucking could exist without railroads, but railroads could not exist without trucking.

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