Shipping containers are the primary transport used on rail shipping too. I was at a conference in Reno a couple of years ago and the hotel room I stayed in overlooked a rail yard. I probably spent a couple of hours watching, I was so in awe of the speed and efficiency of workers transferring the containers between the double-stacked rail cars and the special flatbed trucking trailers that truckers would haul to and from the next destination. Each container has a locking bolt on each corner that is used to hold it down on the truck trailer, rail car, or the shipping container below it (for the double-stacked rail cars).adrianpglover wrote: Mon Nov 08, 2021 7:55 am Maybe all of this supply shortage overseas will cause a resurgence in buying "Made in U.S.A." products. To my knowledge, not too many products made here will be put in a shipping container to move from one port to another. Much easier to move it by rail and truck.
The transfer yard had special half-wide semi tractors that whipped around that yard, moving the flatbed trailers, either with or without a container onboard. I couldn’t believe how quickly they could back a trailer into a narrow spot parallel to the other trailers. The driver really was just whipping that trailer around. It was amazing to watch.