What's stopping intermodal containers being used to displace the long-distance trucking? Trains should on the face of it be cheaper, even when you're not transporting bulk commodities (you're talking in the US case a train 1500m long, potentially with the containers double-stacked depending on the route).
It comes down to highway transportation being massively subsidized in the US, to the detriment of rail. So rail is cheaper but much higher latency than trucking, with the potential for long and unpredictable delays.
