One point to remember is that EVERY customer has a road going to their facility; not everyone has railroad tracks alongside the building.
As a veteran truck driver with 12 years in LTL, ( what RR's used to do as LCL ), I can say that SERVICE is paramount to ALL shippers, and they pay good money for it. In many cases almost double the rail rate per hundred weight. So why then do many railroads have such thin margins on Intermodal shipments ??? And why do so many trucking companies use Intermodal for their long haul ??? The supposed ' driver shortage ' of 5 years ago has evaporated in the face of our recession, except at those trucking companies that treat the driver worse than the truck and always have turnover. Now that rail has captured so much of their main competitor's business, why don't they raise rates to near trucking levels ??? If the service is there, wouldn't railroads keep the business ???