Moving goods from the train to the truck is not a negligible cost. Also, you have to move lots of things in batch with the train, which makes product and supply chains unless nimble. Perishable agriculture products, for one thing, benefit greatly from truck transport.
Yes. Unloading stuff from a container is not a negligible cost, but transferring the whole thing from a train to a semitruck really should be. It is a very large part of their purpose.
A nimble supply chain, or "just in time" as they call it, is a hack large companies use to shift quantities from one column of their quarterly reports to another that the stock market looks more favourably upon. Analysts can't very well quantify the risk of a JIT supply chain but they know cash flow over finished goods.
That isn't true. It means you need less storage space, and you need less capital tied up in parts you aren't using. It also means your cabbages don't rot.
