Cornelius "the Commodore" Vanderbilt became a multimillionaire running a railroad at a time when locomotives required a crew of two (engineer/fireman) and each train required multiple brakemen and a conductor, along with hospitality staff for passenger trains. Not to mention the thousands of signal operators, all replaced with a couple $600 pc's. This at a time when there were dozens of competitors.
When dealing with freight, there were no cargo containers, each boxcar had to be loaded and unloaded by hand, and oil was shipped in barrels that had to be moved one at a time (some rope/pulley system I believe). Nowadays a single person operating a crane can transfer the entire contents of a flatcar to a waiting truck in a single move (two if they are double stacked).
With all these advances they can't get their act together, but there is a reason for that: government intervention.
Government intervened to bankrupt the railroads in favor of the trucking industry. Forty years I read a book about regulations being used to kill competition. I believe the title was The Triumph of Conservatism.
Government intervened to bankrupt the railroads in favor of the trucking industry.
I currently work in the recycling business.
All of the recycling they get in Montana must be shipped 1,600 miles by RAIL to Colorado to be processed.
We recycle cardboard, Aluminum and steel cans and plastics #1 and #2.
We also do newspaper and white paper we get from Golden Forms. They print register receipts for various companies like Pizza Hut. I imagine their finished products are shipped across the country. ;)
I read an article a few days ago about how GM and Firestone, with government help, destroyed street cars and interurbans so they could sell more cars, busses, and tires. Something I already knew, but more relevant today as Biden works to destroy what remains of the freight railroad industry. Government had already killed passenger rail by 1970 with over-regulation, creating Amtrak. We went from having luxurious trains like the Super Chief to basically having really long equivalents of school busses.
I can't find that particular article, but this one provides a brief synopsis: