Technology

I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn't really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.

Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we'd get full truckload sized orders.

When it came to them, often "intermodal" shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.

As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.

However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.

It wasn't usually a drastic difference, we're talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren't many places in the US that we couldn't get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.

It always blew my mind that we didn't or couldn't push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.

I don't claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I'd think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn't anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time

Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.

Except that's rail only carries 16% of freight by weight and 2% of freight by value.

Pretty sure USA hates freight rail too.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-846-november-10-2014-trucks-move-70-all-freight-weight-and-74-freight-value

But american freight trains are laughably bad too

https://youtu.be/AJ2keSJzYyY

Bet that semi trucks are more expensive due to road damage and congestion alone.

You'd think that, but you're talking about Texas, where corporate profit always wins over people's safety and well-being.

I dunno I can see it being done, go in first with a drone and blind the cameras one by one (not hard to rig it up with spray paint) then grab the goods, pick an isolated section of the route so you're gone by the time anyone comes looking.

I for one predict a glorious era of road pirates.