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Trucking exists because planes, trains and ships can't go everywhere. Especially with certain cargo, like food that needs to be refrigerated (or frozen) at particular temperature.
Do you think can there be a development or breakthrough that can help aviation gain an edge over traditional trucking??
Trucks haul "air mail" due to cost concerns, so unless it becomes cheaper to actually transport "air mail" via aircraft, trucks will still transport more freight than aircraft.
Trucking exists because planes, trains and ships can't go everywhere. Especially with certain cargo, like food that needs to be refrigerated (or frozen) at particular temperature.
Except for what moves in containers and trailers-on-flatcars, most manufactured, miscellaneous and perishable freight disappeared from the rails between 1960 and 1980. Produce, dressed meat, structural steel, and general merchandise all proved inadaptable to a slower, heavier, less-frequent service geared more to the movement of bulk commodities in lots of 50 tons or more which, in turn, emerged because the railroads" physical plant had deteriorated due to deferred maintenance.
The rebuild of a slimmed-down infrastructure in the Eighties stabilized the traffic picture and won some business back after 1985, Several major truckers, most notably J B Hunt, Swift, and Schneider National, have rebuilt their traffic base around long rail hauls with fairly short pick-up and delivery runs at the end points -- and I doubt that the present labor market can supply the pool of geographically- and culturally- savvy young men (or women) who made things run in the "whatever works" atmosphere of the early Seventies, when this poster worked in the Central Dispatch of one of the many common-carrier truckers (the great, not-quite-late Jones Motor), which was reincarnated in another capacity, but only after being caught, bankrupted, and reorganized in the "deregulation shakeout".
Because the American surface transportation system is a very adaptable critter.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 04-18-2016 at 08:13 PM..
UPS may not own a railroad but they transport a lot of freight via rail. There are regular trains travelling across the country with long strings of double stacked containers labelled UPS.
in the end, aviation can kill the trucking industry, the real question though is, will aviation kill trucking, and the answer to that is not in the lifetime of our great great grandchildren.
No we need trucks, they have their purpose. Relying only on aviation is not smart. Say something needs to delivered. It's from Europe. It's brought to the U.S via plane, then here it is distributed to several close cities. Trucking is better.
Aviation has been around a long time and trucking did not go out of business. Trucking and aviation to a lesser extent made a dent on rail, but not completely.
And no drones won't put trucking, cars and people out of business either.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 2nd trick op
Trucks might, but a container ship carrying hundreds of shipments wouldn't; and the completion of the PANAMX project (widening and deepening of the Panama Canal to accommodate larger container ships) is anticipated later tis year. That, in turn will reduce the dominance of the Port of Los Angeles / Long Beach and the railroads serving it, in the overland movement of trans-Pacific containers. Hampton Roads (Norfolk) and Savannah seem likely to be the biggest winners over the long run -- New York is too shallow and already congested.
When I worked for Northwest Airlines, we had a dedicated fleet of 15 or so 747-200F aircraft, mainly flying between MSP and NRT, or other ports and NRT. One of the big money makers was perishables like flowers and similar items. That sort of specialized application needs fast travel.
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