The trailers should just be picked up and dropped on flatcars, and trucks used for intracity last mile stuff.
I hear this all the time, and honestly in many cases a truck is the transportation of last resort. If you need 5 shipping containers of goods going from A->B all arriving at Time X; it's probably going by train.
An issue with rail (as pointed out by others) is how to haul the freight from the rail head (rail yard) to the end warehouses, and the extra time it takes to have goods go on two trucks and one train instead of just one truck. The other issue is that in the US it's really hard to hire and retain long haul truck drivers (it turns out most people want to go home each night after a hard day’s work).
Competition to hire drivers is fierce, and driver turnover can be 100%/yr...which means sometimes your drivers don't show up to pull your freight. Rail is also generally cheaper so if you can put your goods on the train you do.
As far as wear and tear on the highway: that's what weigh stations are for. They not only assign usage taxes, they also make sure weight is evenly distributed across the axles to limit damage to the road.
/SSA
That doesn't create a system where trucks pay taxes roughly proportional to the damage they do.
You could also say that the research is pretty incomplete. All the known studies have been performed at highway speeds...it's entirely plausible that speed exaggerates the damage disparity.
I believe WalterBright meant that even at the legal weight limit, trucks cause 10,000x as much damage as cars. In 2005 this amounting to a $60b taxpayer subsidy.[1]
This isn't to criticize Starsky Robotics (this inefficiency predates it), which is just operating in the environment it finds itself. And in general, inefficiency begets opportunity.
[1] https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-indu...
Right or wrong, I don't think you have to defend that point. The government sets these parameters under which you (or truckers) do business. It's not your responsibility to maintain the highway as long as each truck complies with regulations. And it's not your fault.
American taxpayers subsidise many other things that don't quite make sense (to me), like corn production. You don't see people blame farmers for doing what's best for their farm and family.
Would it have been a better solution? Probably, but the investment required (laying down the rails, land buyouts, copious use of emanate domain, political greasing of the wheels, etc...) has always been prohibitive. The gains would be shared between many disparate groups that would need to fund this together, taking years to decades for any ROI - certainly a longer time-frame than most publicly traded, quarterly measured, corporations can afford. At the least this would have required some government subsidization.
With driver-less tech around the corner, returns on this investment for any one company become even more dubious, and thus make it less likely to happen. I think the parent comment here will always get some up-votes, but that is as far as I see this going anymore. Maybe it'd go farther if we threw in words like 'Hyperloop' ;)
The reason this sorry state of affairs exists is because truck traffic is heavily subsidized (highways paid for with taxes) whereas rail traffic is heavily taxed (and the rail companies have to pay for the tracks).
It could be improved by increasing weight taxes on trucks, and using the proceeds to subsidize intercity tracks.
Many trucks in the US have a bumper sticker that says, "Without trucks, America stops." Teamster strikes, like the León Vilarín teamster strike in October 1972 in Chile, are a disaster for any country and create national emergencies.
I think it's mostly a last mile problem (you'll need big trucks to carry from the station), compounded by the fact that most of the train station of cities and I don't think they is a lot of dedicated cargo train station. Also you do not control part of the schedule: you are dependent on the departure/arrival time of trains. And don't forget the strikes...
Rail traffic is allocated on a timetable, for both passenger and goods trains. The time and route is called a "path" in British English, and reserving one costs money.
A power station might have a daily path from a port to their power plant, as they can reliably use all the coal.
Rail freight companies book many paths between freight terminals, container ports and so on and mix together goods from many customers to run on trains on these paths. Therefore, the timings are reliable, potentially more reliable than by road, but the flexibility is less.
If there aren't any goods to move, the company doesn't need to use the path. (I used to live close to a railway line used to transfer trains containing nuclear waste. The reprocessing plant had a path to run a train every day, but only used it every couple of weeks -- presumably, they don't like leaving the waste at the power station any longer than necessary.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_in_Great_Britain#...
Prior to the rise of the Interstate Highway system, most warehouses were on rail lines, or spurs. You'll still find the trackage, or at least the traces of them, in many urban areas throughout the U.S.
In San Francisco, the region near Potrero Hill by the old Fashion Design Centre. The odd street patterns and building perimeters show the former track rights of way.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco+Design+Cente...
Things that would be toss-ups or wins for rail are instead pushed to trucking. This would just be wasteful, and not so pernicious, were it not for the serious negative impacts on the layout of our towns that result from favoring trucks so heavily.
The amount of semi traffic from Portland to Seattle on I-5 has exploded, it certainly made driving that stretch a lot less enjoyable.
IMO, Automated trucking makes trains more not less useful. The core problem with using trains is speed plus how much time and effort loading and unloading takes. With automated trucks you can significantly reduce this friction.
Norfolk southern runs behind my house and I see semi trailers on top of rail cars all the time. I see UPS trailers on trains almost every time I watch one.
Refrigerated semi trailers are common on trains too. I’m guessing they have food in them.
Driving on I5 that seems to be a continuous stream of semi trucks, while I rarely see a freight train next to the freeway.
Much more chance for congestion. I lived right next to a set of tracks once. Trains would regularly sit for over an hour without moving.