The productivity and profitability of a location is related directly to its ability to get the goods and services it provides to the marketplace. For nearly a century that means of transportation has been the efficient and low cost (because of subsidation) railway system. The picture above is interesting because the massive freight truck heading across the intersection of highways #35 and #3 has in the foreground the rail line, switch and associated equipment of that surplanted transportation system. Clearly, the evidence we have before us is that trucks have taken over. Some may consider this the information age but for material production and distribution we are definitely in the "trucking era".
Tisdale's
thoroughfares are essentially trucking routes as huge machines rumble through and
around the community carrying grain, cement, bails, finished manufactured goods,
lumber both finished and as logs, peat moss the list seems endless. This twenty minute interval is hardly unique it was between 9:15 and 10:35 on a snowy Thursday morning in November.
The railway system is still partly in place and continues to serve only to haul away the grain production from this area and only some of it because the trucking industry can compete with the railways even in bulk commodities because the trucking industry runs on the roadways that we the public provide for them so that in fact they are far more subsidised then the rail system. It is important for us to understand that they cost of transportation is one of the major components in the price of a product and because trucking is largely uncontrolled and the railway business is privately own structured to make a profit, the tax payer and consumer is footing the bill entirely. Business has been able to get a free ride as the tax payer foots the bill.
