In reply to: If you drive 20,000 miles a year in a four-wheel... posted by Kbyrnes
...Certainly higher prices for refined petroleum products usually makes other things more expensive; I'm not sure I've seen that it's in the range of $370 a month for an average household, but that depends on what they buy.
Not to be too glib, but beans, rice, and everyday fruits and vegetables aren't all that expensive. For example, the BLS indicates that the average price of bananas has increased in three years by about 5%. "Other fresh vegetables" are up about 6%. Other items, particularly those that require significant animal husbandry and/or processing like beef, pork, poultry, eggs, and processed canned goods, are up significantly more, part of the price we pay for eating what I call "industrialized food." (Yes, I like a slider or a bag of Doritos every so often too.)
Take eggs, for example. They're up something like 23% in the last three years. But a dozen eggs costs something like $2.50 to $3.00 depending on what part of the country you're in. A family of four that had an average of an egg a day for a 30-day month would spend about $22.50 to $30.00 on eggs, before sales taxes. In 2019 it would've been about $18.30 to $24.40; the difference of about $4 to $5.50 a month shouldn't be too oppressive on any family.
Inflation is a major issue--there's no evading that. But we should probably dig down and ask, what exactly costs more, and what does it say about our patterns of consumption?
And save the trucks for last mile delivery.
Chicago ohare has become very busy and is now our most important port by value of trade. We have a lot of rail but a good number is still going out by truck. So we are getting a triple whammy of losing out on sea freight, paying more for stuff to come in via gas guzzling planes, and then shipping from the center (not really) of the country. And we are using a lot of trucks.
Also there is a pilot shortage so that may be a quadruple whammy.
Edit: the above stat comes from last weeks economist. Linked below
That siad, I'm all for more rail, both personal and freight.
Beach containers go by rail. I didn't include a link for that, but I did for ongoing plans to expand rail shipping.
One issue that the US has is that a lot of the railways are single-tracked, which can cause delays when a train has to sit at a siding to let another one pass. Unfortunately during the downturn in rail traffic, a lot of dual tracks were ripped out to save on maintenance.
I can remember as a youngster stopped at a rail crossing and counting the number of rail cars that went by (as many as 200 IIRC).
Wonder what percent of those that go by tuck are local? I'd guess pretty high. I'd also be curious to know what the breakdown is on rail usage by imported containers vs. "domestic" shipments.
Perhaps other ports are better. You have a valid point about what distance and speed of delivery make rail or trucks a better choice. Some of the recent rail changes have sped up the route through the cities. I know that there are hge warehouse facilities in neighboring counties, such as the facilities in the city of Banning. Presumably these are rail delivery and distribution facilities.
Oakland has a much lower train usage at its port (10% vs 50% for Los Angeles) I know there's an inconsistency between my reported 35% and this. The supply chain crisis seemed a perfect storm with empty containers piling up in the ports awaiting transport back to the Far East and the ships they were to go on were waiting offshore for space to unload their containers.
if you don’t know what your talking about though. The US is one of the best at moving freight with rail though.