Grain pounds roads to crap

[Jdhot]

Elevator and rail evolution has led to trucking grain longer distances. If rail can charge to pay for the rail bed, why are trucks not paying for the road bed that they are pounding to crap.
The flip slide would be rail bed becoming public, which is probably a non starter. Just trying to make grain transport more market driven.

[15444]

Trucks pay for the roadbed with their annual plate sticker fee. It's a few thousand dollars for one for a semi here in Ontario. Maybe too cheap in your province?

[bucket]

The sad part is to make the highways to primary you basically build a rail bed.

Crazy what this country has done.

Rail beds still being tore out.

[sumdumguy]

Insane, but with no government intervention, that's what you get. We had 3-5 elevators every eight miles and two railroads running on every set of tracks. Guess who is profiting from the destruction!

[fjlip]

Isn't "MARKET DRIVEN" great! No vision no long term plan just blindly "PROGRESS" for the $$$ and shareholders. Billions transferred from the public to BIG corps! But Oh we can't tell business what to do! Change for the sake of change, we HAD the best system and smashed and burned 1200 elevators and tore up the tracks.

[farmaholic]

I guess they haven't found equilibrium yet. Amazing what once was, a spider web network of rail lines built to "SERVICE" (now there is a new word and concept for the remaining "Providers")the once growing rural Prairies. I won't argue that some abandonment and consolidation wasn't necessary but the pendulum has swung way too far.

The cost of keeping these lines open and in good repair is a "burden" to the existing owners.

Under NO circumstances should a line with a modern concrete terminal on it be allowed to be closed and abandoned. Who the **** thinks this is a good idea?

When money and "maximized" profits for duopoly companys trump common sense and public interest, what we have now is what we get!!!

[farmaholic]

And they should **** off with the dog-in-the-manger attitude. If they don't want it, it should be mandated that if there is interest in a Shortline operating it they should be allowed to. Either that or the "BigBoys" should put a ****ing train on it!!!

What would be wrong with a bunch of short line companies doing the light lifting for the major rail companies?

[SASKFARMER3]

Funny on north side of border all elevators are torn down and rail sidings ripped up! On ND side still old elevators with new bins added and rail sidings left! So the question for our so smart farm groups what happend! Maybe for way to long farming has been sold a huge amount of lies!

[pourfarmer]

...think of the revenue(tax) generated from trucking grain. Me and you know its short term gain but the feds pretend like they don't.

[Braveheart]

SF3, I live right beside ND. Most of the tracks in this part of ND are gone. The elevators in a lot of cases are left, but grain is trucked to bigger terminals on lines still in service. Most of these small remaining elevators are co-ops and are really struggling to stay open. Their advantage is their affiliation with Cenex Harvest States as big brother.