They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train.
And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field.
Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.
Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.
They used ice in the old days. Strawberries will last up to 6 days if you refrigerate them coming home from the store, I don't know how long that is since they were picked.
It’s quite common for me to show up at a shipper in the morning and whatever I’m picking up is still in the field. I’ve even had stuff loaded straight into the trailer out of the field a few times.
