What's the point of bringing food into Portland by boat, when you have SLC demanding food as well? Ship food to the big hub, take some by truck into SLC, the rest should go by train to Portland. Same wagons, almost full both ways... You've got to up your game. 🙂
I am bringing food into Portland by boat because we are bringing grain to that food processing plant by boat. That way the boat delivers a full load of grain at the food processing plant and returns with a full load of food to be trucked into Portland. We also end up with more dispersed truck traffic into Portland which is an issue we are currently dealing with in Houston. I do see your point, but at the moment I have to choose between having boats run empty on the return trip or the train return partially empty. There is an argument to be made that the boat line does not need to exist and everything could be trucked to the food processing plant, however that would clog up our road heading into the food processing plant.
Once you're ready to deliver more cargo to those big three cities, I think you should start by using that Construction Materials Factory in Houston with the quarry close-by. It's an easy delivery for Houston and you can use the same cargo train for SLC. Also, maybe you could group those four farms together closer to the Food Factory and truck ALL the grain there. It'll make profit regardless of food demand, and you're future proofing at the same time while cutting out that shipping route to Portland like @ymeshulin another commenter said. And since you're starting the next episode by reviewing rates, just go through the vehicle list and upgrade all possible trucks. It might help with the traffic problems.
I'll look into that construction materials line, thanks for pointing that out! As for the food processing line, I am hesitant to switch to all trucks because that would generate a lot of truck traffic in the food processing plant and we would start to limit ourselves with how many truck we can fit on the roads. I believe we will unlock a bigger truck in about a year or two in game, so depending on how much capacity those have, at that point I think it might be logical to make that switch.
