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:

The Demise of the Interurban

The Demise of the Interurban

When I drove the straight truck, I had a delivery in Philadelphia. I stopped at a fuel stop west of town. It was just about dinner time and there was a roadside cafe a quarter mile west, so I walked up there to eat. It was better food than at the fuel stop, which was fast food.

I made my delivery the next morning. After I had done that, I pulled out of the dock and went inside to use the rest room. When I came out a cop had tagged the truck for "parking on curb". I threw the ticket away.

A month later they sent the boss a dun for $100. He told me, "Next time you get one of these give it to me." Parking tickets are part of the cost of doing business in the trucking industry.

Of course, the cop saw it was out of state tags, so it was sleazy money for them. :-/

As I've probably told everyone here before, I grew up in Kokomo, IN, but did a stint in Greentown (1968-1972) which is like 10 miles East of Kokomo. You can still see the roadbed where the interurban ran out to Greentown, right beside modern SR 22-35. Greentown is so small almost anyone could walk from depot to use it, probably didn't take any longer than the 10 minutes it takes now to drive into the heart of Kokomo. Actually, probably less, given all the traffic lights that have sprung up on the Kokomo side thanks to Meijer and Walmart.

Used to be a fruit/vegetable stand in Greentown next to the tracks, it's been decaying since late 1940's, probably nothing left now, my memories are from 1970 or so. One trolley run a day could have kept it stocked, versus 100 car trips.

Kokomo has grown considerably since 1930, but Greentown really hasn't.

Kokomo has grown considerably since 1930

My ex co-driver's Daddy moved to Checotah, Oklahoma in the 1930s. It was a boom town because of the oil and there was one killing per week. ;)