We don’t need self-driving trucks for this. This is already how intermodal shipping works: a driver picks up a container and takes it to a rail yard, it gets loaded onto a train, and then when it gets near enough to where it’s going, another driver takes it from the rail yard for final delivery.
The reasons for not doing intermodal are the same as not being able to do self-driving trucks: oversize loads, document-controlled shipments (haz-mats, for example), and mixed deliveries along a route. Almost everything else could be put on a train, but it would take some infrastructure upgrades and likely unattainable levels of cooperation from shippers.
Hell even the delivery along routes issue is one that can and has been solved in the past. The railway post office sorted mail en route for by postal clerks and existed as late as the 1970s, because Nixon was from SoCal and we really like our trains. While it may not be fully applicable it could still work for smaller liquid sort items, as for larger carriage specific ones I’m aware of at least one railyard that used to have those ones unlatched and moved as needed within a 5 minute period not accounting for stopping.
We don’t need self-driving trucks for this. This is already how intermodal shipping works: a driver picks up a container and takes it to a rail yard, it gets loaded onto a train, and then when it gets near enough to where it’s going, another driver takes it from the rail yard for final delivery.
The reasons for not doing intermodal are the same as not being able to do self-driving trucks: oversize loads, document-controlled shipments (haz-mats, for example), and mixed deliveries along a route. Almost everything else could be put on a train, but it would take some infrastructure upgrades and likely unattainable levels of cooperation from shippers.
Hell even the delivery along routes issue is one that can and has been solved in the past. The railway post office sorted mail en route for by postal clerks and existed as late as the 1970s, because Nixon was from SoCal and we really like our trains. While it may not be fully applicable it could still work for smaller liquid sort items, as for larger carriage specific ones I’m aware of at least one railyard that used to have those ones unlatched and moved as needed within a 5 minute period not accounting for stopping.