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You may have seen the TV commercial for CSX Railroad that brags the company can "move a ton of freight 423 miles on a single gallon of fuel" and wondered, like me, how that's possible. Are they just using one of the miles after the train gets up to speed?...i.e., after the resistance has been overcome and inertia has taken over? Somebody asked that question on an AMTRAK website and wrote that he eventually got the following answer from CSX:
Thank you for your inquiry about our advertising.
Our ad states "trains can move a ton of freight 423 miles on a single gallon of fuel," and it is correct. The 423 is calculated by dividing the total tons hauled by a single freight train by the total gallons of fuel used. So, on a per mile, per ton basis, the amount of fuel needed is extremely low. In fact, it is so low that trains are between three and four times more fuel efficient than trucks.
So, even though it takes more than one gallon of fuel to power a train for 423 miles, the train actually uses less fuel than the more than 280 trucks it would take to haul the same amount of freight.
Thank you again for contacting us.
Sincerely,
TellCSX Team
Kinda smarmy answer if you ask me....and I'm sure truckers will mention that fact that if you want to clear the roads for them to be able to travel without stopping for anyone else, they'd get better mileage too. What do you think?
That's true, but do you know of anybody clamoring to get their cars off the road and start riding buses, commuter trains, or just car pooling.
ReplyDeleteIf the truckers want to pay the full cost of maintaining their "right of way", as the railroads do, they can drive on it any way they want. In the meantime, they're using a heavily subsidized highway to get where they are going.
ReplyDeleteDid I mention that the railroads wholly own their own tracks?
The trucks do pay for the road. its called a road use tax and it is not cheap.
DeleteI don't think CSXT was just blowing smoke when they made this comment. I believe it completely true, and that shipping by rail is 3 times more fuel efficient then trucking. Railroads have always been the more reliable, fuel efficient, and cleanest way to move freight from point A to point B.
ReplyDeletehow does it get from the rail yard to the stores? Trucks
DeleteI think you're wrong in your conclusion, but I think the CSX marketting person who gave their answer (if that indeed was their answer) didn't really state or explain it very well, mathematically. You're supposed to divide the total miles of the trip by the total gallons of fuel used, and then multiply that by the number of tons carried, to arrive at the truly impressive number of miles per gallon for a single ton of freight.
ReplyDeleteThus it's clear that they're including in the calculation the part of the trip where the train "gets up to speed".
Truckers could say that if the roads were cleared for them, they could do better mileage, which is correct (though they probably couldn't get up to the numbers the train does - for example they'll have to be able to haul 10 tons getting 42.3 miles per gallon). However that's irrelevant, since the fact is that the roads are not clear, while the trains do have clear tracks to run on.
What I don't understand is, who is CSX really advertising for? Probably not for people like me - all I do is go to the grocery store and buy food, etc. I don't ship much, and if I would, I would have no idea how to ask to ship my stuff using a train rather than otherwise!
Abuya said: What I don't understand is, who is CSX really advertising for? Probably not for people like me - all I do is go to the grocery store and buy food, etc. I don't ship much, and if I would, I would have no idea how to ask to ship my stuff using a train rather than otherwise!
ReplyDeleteTree replies: Next time you're sitting at a railroad crossing, waiting for a train to pass, you can say to your passenger, "there go my new sneakers, and the lettuce for my salad..."
CSX doesn't expect you to ship by rail, as such, but they want you to understand just how important rail is to the economy.
There's actually a lot they don't tell you regarding how the data was collected. Was this average tonnage/fuel usage over an X year period on all their routes or a single selected, highly controlled run over, say, a downhill route pulling the largest tonnage possible using equipment selected and prepared to generate non-typical, but supportive data? They don't say and that omission makes me question their claim.
ReplyDelete"If the truckers want to pay the full cost of maintaining their "right of way", as the railroads do, they can drive on it any way they want." Actually, if you were to look into the taxes and fees paid by trucks you'd find that "4 wheeler's" have the lesser claim on highways. If "right of way" were determined by the share of support provided by trucks vs cars, you might find yourself pulling to the "breakdown lane" letting that "18 wheeler" roll on through. Fees and taxes imposed on the trucking industry are huge and if compared to the single license plate fee for cars, they become astronomical. So, I'd suggest a bit of meekness when you start claiming right of way connected to $$$ contributions. Finally, if the fees and taxes paid by both trucks and cars were used correctly the highways probably would be fully funded by the users.
As to who this advertising is being aimed at: I submit it is warm-up propaganda directed at the public to create support for the "green energy" contingency to eventually demand more rail tonnage vs highway transport. In a utopian, parallel universe maybe this would be a good idea. But, in the current world where I live, the money I can put in my pocket determines my standard of living. Putting everything on a choo-choo is, like most all the green energy projects, more expensive and time consuming for the more common mid to low volume load, than direct A to B road transportation. Hence, less money in that pocket and a resulting lowering of life style. That's another fact they don't mention in this ad.
And that brings me to my quesion: Is this ad to invoke support for rail transport on the basis of pollution or energy usage or both? I suspect the answer is this is a shotgun approach trying to gin up support from whoever will bite their bait.
Blowing off the claims by marketing wizards is an unfortunate reality of life. It happens every day for all of us, from poor man's kitchen table to railroads to big corporations.
ReplyDeleteWhen an insurance company advertises that you can buy coverage for up to millions of dollars for as little as a few cents a day, your premium will never go up and your coverage can never be dropped...yada yada yada, are they not playing with sentiments of innocent people?
When A claims you can save $423 by switching from B, and B claims saving $581 switching from C, and C claims saving $387 by switching from A, are they not assuming that common folks are intellectually deficient?
You are told to buy one suit and get two absolutely free, offer ends Friday. When you hear this for years, don't you feel that you are being taken for ride?