It is a misconception that John Kneiling was anti-carload. On the contrary, he was a proponent of railroads moving ANY kind of freight - provided they do it the right way. What he argued against was the obsessive need of railroads to drag down a freight car's average velocity with needless reclassifications. That's one of the reasons the philosophy of longer heavier trains was counterintuitive to carload freight. I remember one of John's recollections of a wholesaler who was frustrated that his boxcar went by his warehouse FOUR TIMES before his car was finally spotted (and eventually went 100% truck for his transport needs).

Longer heavier trains - THAT's what killed carload.

Although John was THE Godfather of the unit train concept, his idea was for railroads (not necessarily Class I's) to aggregate the freight into solid units, not trucks. And his conception of unit trains was not limited to long haul - he loved the idea of shorthaul unit trains, not to mention short fast dedicated trains avoiding constant freight car reclassifications.

This is where labor vs Kneiling battle was most apparent, since it was labor costs per revenue load that caused the loss of branchline/short train economies of scale compared to trucking. It is somewhat ironic that the shift of surviving shortline operations from the Class I's to mom'n'pop outfits in the 90's finally reversed this trend, roughly three decades after John suggested it!