Other than that there are a few basic points where he is simply wrong. Take the 80% market concentration. It is actually 60%. Then you factor in the safety numbers. Railroads are exponentially safer, especially for dangerous loads like chemicals and aggregate.

And need we hear about the problems of those abutting rail right of ways, with cars and trucks running amok on our sidewalks. Taxes pay to insulate the interstates from highway noise but pay nothing along rail right of ways. Socialism for trucks. The higher the price of fuel the more freight will run on rail, mathematics and physics.

1) Trucking is less energy efficient than rail. No matter how you slice it.

2) Truckers receive huge government subsidies via the interstate highway system.

3) Tractor-trailers beat up roads and bridges, adding to the cost of maintaining and repairing them.

Face it, guys, peak oil is a reality. One of the results of that will be less freight shipping overall (as the economy shrinks) plus a shift of what remains to rail.

How many of you want a railroad near your home, even if it was physically and financially possible?

I do. In fact, I live two blocks from a major interlocking of the largest passenger railroad in the country – which runs freight service at night. I used to live three blocks from the Santa Fe mainline. What’s not to like?

The Port of Los Angeles is implementing a Clean Truck Program that requires trucks to adhere by 2007 EPA emissions standards by 2012. The ATA supports this because they get to claim that they are green while the IOO’s foot the bill. The other provision of this, that the trucking companies be required to have employee drivers and are responsible for their trucking fleet, is strongly opposed by the ATA, which is essentially a lobby for the trucking companies, not truckers. The employee provision is meant not only to ensure that the truckers are paid decent wages and have access to health care – but to make sure that the costs of converting to greener technology is borne by the trucking companies rather than low-income workers.

http://www.portoflosangeles.org/environment/ctp.asp

Yes you totally do: “Rolling resistance, sometimes called rolling friction or rolling drag, is the resistance that occurs when a round object such as a ball or tire rolls on a surface. It is caused by the deformation of the object, the deformation of the surface, or both. “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_friction

Sliding friction is what happens when you apply the breaks, which is what I assume you must be thinking of with your misguided nitpick. (I’m not mad, just mad for SCIENCE!)

[/nitpick]

Now, if the truckers were really together, they’d be advocating for national healthcare and building a network of co-operatively owned gas wholesalers were they could purchase fuel. But it’s hard to get people to see solutions like this. Even in Europe where truckers are governed by union wages but still counted as independent contractors, truckers repeatedly stage protests over the cost of fuel. In France, they regularly bring shipping to a halt.

Sounds a little ominous! But I assume they don’t really want to eradicate us, because then we wouldn’t be financing their highly inefficient shipping industry. They just want our passenger cars off the roads, so they can drive faster on them. I like half of that idea! And also the one about extra-special roads for truckers. Except I recommend we roll these futuretrucks on long strips of iron, because that has a much lower coefficient of friction than rubber on asphalt. We could calls these special roads for truckers with iron rails on them “rail-roads”. Large shipments could achieve even greater efficiency (goooo green!) by coupling themselves together, a “train” of shipping cars if you will. WDYT?