Unit 2 mode of transport

R eading

Task 1: Read and translate the text.

Text 1

At the heart of logistics are transport vehicles moving goods between suppliers and customers. Transport is responsible for the physical movement of materials between points in the supply chain. In practice, organizations face a lot of questions connected with transport because it is one of the most expensive parts of logistics. Organisations make a series of decisions about the form of transport. What mode of transport is best? Should they run their own transport or use a third-party carrier? What kind of vehicles should they use? Can they back-haul? The most important of these is the question of the transport mode.

The mode of transport describes the type of transport used. There are basically five different options - rail, road, water, air and pipeline. Each mode has different characteristics, and the best in any particular circumstances depends on the type of goods to be moved, locations, distance, value and a whole range of other things. Sometimes there is a choice of mode. Often, though, there is little choice. If you want to deliver coffee from Brazil to Amsterdam, you will use shipping; if you want to move gas from the Gulf of Mexico to Dallas, you use a pipeline, if you want an express parcel service across the Atlantic, you use air freight.

Road

Road is the most widely used mode of transport and is used - at least somewhere - in almost all supply chains. Its main benefit is flexibility, being able to visit almost any location. Although the maximum speed on roads is limited, this ability to give a door-to-door service avoids transfers to other modes, and can give a shorter overall journey time. The plane travels faster, but when you add on the travel times to and from the airports, check-in and boarding, it is faster to catch a bus between the city centres. Nonetheless, travel speed can be an important consideration, especially as roads are becoming more congested and vehicles are likely to move even more slowly.

Road transport has the advantage of being able to use extensive road networks. Unlike rail, these already exist, so users do not have to build and maintain their own tracks. Also, vehicles do not have to keep to such rigid timetables, so they can go on journeys at short notice and with little planning.

In contrast to rail, where each operator is likely to have a (near) monopoly over some route, road transport is characterised by a large number of carriers working in the same areas. In the USA, for example, there are 40,000 public carriers and 600,000 private fleets. With so many operators competition is likely to be more intense and pricing more flexible.

There is a huge number of different types of road vehicle. Many of these are specialised, and designed for specific purposes, and there are different regulations in different countries. The following list mentions some of the more important types.

• Delivery vans are the small delivery vehicles which can carry a tone or two in a sealed body. Smaller vans are based on car designs, while larger ones - such as Luton Box vans - are like small removal vans.

• Flat-bed lorries are basic, rigid vehicles with two or three axles, and a flat platform that is used to stack materials. Materials are tied on, or small sides are added.

• Box-bodied lorries are like the flat beds, except they have bodies added, traditionally with access from the rear. These give more protection than flat beds. In the 1970s Boalloy added curtain siding to give easier access to the load.

• Articulated lorries, are more maneuverable than rigid lorries, so they can be bigger, up to the legal weight limit. There are many variations on the theme of trucks that bend in the middle. A common format has a two- or three-axled tractor and a two- or three-axled trailer.

• Lorry and trailer which combine a rigid lorry pulling a two-axle trailer. This gives greater capacity than an articulated lorry, but maintains some of its maneuverability.

Many different formats have been tried. In Sweden, for example, they use articulated lorries with trailers, giving two, or even three, points of articulation. In Alberta, Canada, they use two trailers to move loads over the Rockies. In Australia “land trains” have four or five trailers to move through the outback. Perhaps the overall picture is that, within prevailing regulations, the type of vehicle is only limited by the designers' imagination.

Depending on conditions, road transport can normally carry loads up to, say, 20-30 tonnes. The European Union has a gross limit of 42 tonnes and different limits apply in other areas. In exceptional circumstances, very large loads can be carried, such as the loads of a thousand tonnes that are moved for oil companies in the Arctic. However, weight and size limits mean that road transport is more often used for smaller loads. These become relatively expensive, so road transport is generally used for shorter distances. Although it is a very simplistic view, you are more likely so see road transport used for delivering finished goods than bulky raw materials. Another problem is that lorries are particularly vulnerable to congestion and traffic delays.