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anschutz_shooter t1_ixpzqiy wrote

Most trucking isn't like that though - even in Canada. Measuring by "daily journeys", local freight dominates over long-haul, and the average journey is well under 300km - railhead/port to warehouse, warehouse to supermarket.

Or distribution between a company's production sites (e.g. where I am in the UK we have a major manufacturer with six factories and one big goods-inbound logistics centre. So they have a fleet of trucks continuously ferrying components from the centre to factories, all <20km. There will be similar arrangements in some Canadian cities). Ideal application for an electric truck (particularly since you control both ends, and can have charging infra anywhere - though these trucks could do at least 5 rounds trips on a single charge).

In truth, 1400km truck journeys shouldn't exist outside of mad niche cases like Ice Road trucking. Between cities or provinces the cargo should just go on a train. Safer, better timetable reliability, lower carbon, one driver per hundred wagons, instead of one-per-trailer.

Even in the UK, companies like Amazon and Tesco (supermarket) are moving heavily to railfreight because it's just more reliable than road haulage. That's mostly for freight between southern England and Scotland, which is "upto 500km". Also, for stuff arriving at ports, so it goes straight on a train and doesn't touch a road until it's near its final destination.

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