| Mode | Fuel Consumption | Infrastructure Capacity | Costs | Safety |
| Railroad | 455 ton-miles per gallon | 216 million tons per mainline per year | 2.7 cents per ton-mile | 0.61 fatalities per billion ton-miles; 12.4 incidents per billion ton-miles |
| Trucking | 105 ton-miles per gallon | 37.8 million tons per lane per year | 5.0 cents per ton-mile | 1.45 fatalities per billion ton-miles; 36.4 incidents per billion ton-miles |
Source: Brown, T.A and A.B. Hatch (2002) The Value of Rail Intermodal to the US Economy.
Rail transportation has several key advantages over trucking, particularly in terms of energy efficiency (4 times), capacity (6 times) and costs (2 times).