Finding the optimal shipping modes and routes can help you reduce shipping costs substantially and improve the efficiency of your supply chain. Rail and truck are the most common shipping modes across land. However, finding which shipping type is right for your materials and your business can be a challenge. Let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of rail vs truck shipping to see which one is best for you. We’ve updated this blog post in 2024 to help you research the advantages of rail shipping vs truck shipping more easily.
The Advantages of Rail vs Truck Shipping
Cost: Advantage for Rail Shipping
When it comes to cost, rail transportation has the advantage. Rail shipping is much more cost-effective than truck shipping for several reasons. Rail is a much more fuel-efficient mode of transportation. Railcars can also carry much more volume than trucks. The below information is gathered from the Association of American Railroads.
About 83 million more trucks would be needed to move freight in the United States if railroads did not move freight. Trucks also require about four times more fuel than rail to handle the freight shipping needs that Americans rely on everyday.
Environmental Impact: Advantage to Rail
Businesses and consumers are both increasingly prioritizing a strong environmental stance. Rail transit, compared to trucking, can significantly reduce the energy costs, carbon emissions, and pollution associated with transit.
- Since rail cars can hold three to four truckloads of cargo, a single freight train can haul a load that would otherwise require over 300 trucks.
- In the US, freight trains can move one ton of goods approximately 470 miles on a single gallon of fuel, compared to trucking’s approximately 134 miles per gallon of diesel.
- Businesses that seek to change their supply chain in favor of sustainability are looking at rail as an eco-friendly transportation mode. On average, rail is four times more fuel efficient than trucks.
- Rail emits 75% fewer GHG emissions than truck shipping
This fuel-efficiency can also help to reduce transportation costs significantly, while also reducing environmental impacts. When it comes to environmental impacts of rail vs truck, rail easily wins out.
Speed: Advantage to Trucking
When comparing the speed of rail vs trucking shipping, the advantage goes to trucking. Extensive highways allow trucks to (usually) follow a shorter path between two points and deliver their cargo faster. Trucks are also generally easier to load and unload. However, the speed advantage of trucking over rail starts to fade over longer distances.
Railroads utilize a network of track that includes large rail yards, which are a series of tracks for sorting, storing loading, and unloading of railcars. These vast yards are filled with railcars waiting for their next move, and these delays often mean rail is not as fast of a freight delivery mode when compared to trucking.
Railcars also experience dwell time on a weekly basis. Dwell time refers to the amount of time a railcar spends waiting at a terminal to move to its next destination.
According to the RSI Industry Yard Dwell report for the week of February 28th, 2024, railcars experience an average of 22.8 hours in weekly dwell time.
Flexibility: Advantage to Trucking
Flexibility is the main advantage of trucking. While railcars must travel along fixed rail routes, trucks have access to a much wider range of roads and highways. This means that trucks are capable of accessing many more loading and unloading points across the nation. Trucks can also find a direct path more easily, while railcars may have to divert around some areas where rail infrastructure isn’t available.
Safety: Advantage for Rail
When comparing the safety of rail vs truck transportation, rail has the advantage. Since rail shipments operate on fixed, monitored routes, compared to the often hectic traffic of highways, rail incidents are much less common.
- Rail freight transportation incurs 1/8 of the fatalities and 1/16th of the injuries that trucks experience per ton-mile. (SteelInterstate.org)
- Railroads safely deliver 99.998 percent of all rail cars containing hazardous materials. (SteelInterstate.org)
- Truck-related hazardous materials incidents caused over 16 times more fatalities from 1975 to 2021 – 380 for truck, compared with 23 for rail (PBS.org)
- Large truck accidents increased 26% from 2020 – 2021 (Forbes Advisor)
- There were 523,796 large truck accidents in 2021 (Forbes Advisor)
Railcars are also less likely to suffer from theft since they are secured and there are fewer opportunities during travel. When railcars are not actively moving, they are positioned in a rail yard that has 24/7 security. When transporting potentially dangerous chemicals, the safety checks and security measures around railcars help to improve safety even further.
Rail shipping has a number of advantages over trucking that can be easy to overlook. Transloading gives shippers the opportunity to take advantage of both rail and trucking. With transloading, shippers can use trucking to increase speed and travel flexibility while taking advantage of the cost-savings, stability, and safety of rail shipping over longer routes.
To learn more about railcar tracking and management, take a look at Rail Command or contact our experts. You can also read our blogs; Comparing the Cost of Rail Shipping vs Truck Shipping and Green Rail: Is Rail Better for the Environment than Trucks? For more information on rail shipping vs truck shipping.
