[throwaway1892]

Even in France, with paying interstate (called autoroute here) and subsidized rail (it was a state monopole until recently), most of transport of goods is by truck.

I think it's mostly a last mile problem (you'll need big trucks to carry from the station), compounded by the fact that most of the train station of cities and I don't think they is a lot of dedicated cargo train station. Also you do not control part of the schedule: you are dependent on the departure/arrival time of trains. And don't forget the strikes...

[Symbiote]

Europe generally prioritises passenger transport over freight transport, but there are rail freight terminals -- probably not anywhere you're likely to visit (example [1])

Rail traffic is allocated on a timetable, for both passenger and goods trains. The time and route is called a "path" in British English, and reserving one costs money.

A power station might have a daily path from a port to their power plant, as they can reliably use all the coal.

Rail freight companies book many paths between freight terminals, container ports and so on and mix together goods from many customers to run on trains on these paths. Therefore, the timings are reliable, potentially more reliable than by road, but the flexibility is less.

If there aren't any goods to move, the company doesn't need to use the path. (I used to live close to a railway line used to transfer trains containing nuclear waste. The reprocessing plant had a path to run a train every day, but only used it every couple of weeks -- presumably, they don't like leaving the waste at the power station any longer than necessary.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_freight_in_Great_Britain#...

[cm2187]

I believe SNCF was also know for loosing freight a few years ago. Might have improved these days since I assume most cars must have some sort of GPS. Timing was another problem since freight had to yield priority to passenger traffic, which is pretty dominant in France.