Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
It's reasonable that costs per unit are negligible when in sufficiently large quantity, and if the number of units shrinks, the impact is more acutely felt.
As the commercials say, shipping a ton of cargo across country by freight train is dirt cheap. That's AS LONG AS THE TRAIN IS FULL with a couple thousand tons of cargo! If that same train had to take just ONE TON of cargo, it would not be cheap!
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A standard 18 wheeler carrys by itself between 18 and 20 tons.
A freight train generally has roughly 100 cars some are stacked 2 high.
Now the catch is that the train usually carries several different companies.
On books, let's say the printing press is in Pennsylvania and the Bookstores headquarters is in San Francisco. Well now I am going to assume that neither of those has a railroad station next door.
Let's say the bookstore has bought a trailer full.
First we have cost of printing.
Someone or a machine to load the books.
Then we have to hire a driver to take all the books to the loading area.
We will also have to have lumpers. Those are the guys that will load the books on the truck.
Now here we can either use a lift off trailer or a regular trailer.
Next step will either be paying the guy to use his special crane to move the trailer onto the train or paying a lumper to move the books from one space to another.
Books get a train ride across the country.
Reverse this process at the other end.
Now we get to the warehouse, where people unbox the books and repackage them for distribution to their stores.
Note, more truck drivers and more fuel. But at least now we are at the point that one doesn't have to pay to get the trucks unloaded.
Ok that was fun.
Before anyone asks, back in the late 80's many companies had the truck drivers either load or the truck drivers had to pay someone to load the trucks.