The one thing trucks have that rail doesn't: flexibility. You need to lay a lot of track - and have lots of small trains, often only pulling a single container, to get to even approach the same flexibility trucks have, in speed, in location, and in routing.

Sure, Just In Time is partly to blame for this. But if your stock intake deliveries now become a monthly event, you need to build a warehouse that holds about six weeks worth of raw material. That's cost.

And unless these folks on bicycles delved for and forged the metal for the bikes themselves, assembled the self-made parts and walked all the way to the Caribbean to get the tree juice for rubber tyres, chances are, a truck brought the bikes to them.