Could / should more supermarket distribution centres have railheads ?

[squizzler]

There might be an argument that trunk hauls might favour rail a bit more - but until rail can match the mode of business described by Poiskey in post #57, all that will happen is the goods you buy will be marginally more expensive.

The mode of business is perhaps what we as a nation ought to address.

By the Edwardian age many time sensitive goods were being sent by rail. Fish made its way to every chippy and fresh milk to every corner-shop using rail. Newspapers got their product to every corner of the land each and every day by train. It was not just distribution from national scale companies either - the consumer of the day could send off for stuff from small producers and have it delivered before it spoiled. This was done with steam trains, primitive refrigeration (probably just a block of ice or two), paperwork using actual paper and no satellite tracking. Yet it still worked. Why? Because it had to. This shows that almost universal rail based logistics is possible including for time sensitive goods.

We haven't the will (and its probably not desirable) get rid of lorries altogether, of course, not until the oil runs out or we find something better. And whilst we are rail enthusiasts there is not a lot of benefit in substituting harmful lorries for less harmful trains if the mode of business is all wrong. I personally feel that the logistics needs to change wholesale. Why do we need so many food miles? Should we as a nation produce and sell food more locally? Is a just-in-time supply chain sufficiently resilient in the case of disruption or national emergency? Don't forget all this ties in with other debates we are having. Don't like the amount of plastic packaging used in food shops? Maybe its something to do with the number of journeys we expect food to survive whilst looking fresh.

One (rather more on-topic) thing not discussed thus far is that society wishes to electrify more transportation for sound environmental reasons. A battery-electric lorry would not have the range of traditional diesel ones. This itself might return the long distance traffic to rail. To prepare for such an eventuality I reckon that commercial developments should have - at the very least - passive provision for a rail spur.

 

[corfield]

Clearly road users pay taxes directly related to road use, the sum of which is vastly greater than spent on providing the road system. Notably it is car/truck owners and drivers that pay, with all the other users receiving the benefits for no directly related taxes.

In contrast, rail users do not pay sufficient fares to cover that spent providing the rail system.

No matter how you cut the fares/direct/indirect/general taxation semantics, or try to smear those you dislike - the facts remain true. And the numbers aren't even close.

So, again, reasonable options are a combination of (1) make rail users pay more to cover the cost of the system they use, (2) use the money raised from road users to invest more in the road system, (3) reduce the amount road users pay.

Of course, (2) and (3) come at a cost, reducing the amount that other expenditures can be subsidised, including rail.

Again - my interest is whether the HGV model we have now, which is undoubtedly far more flexible and delivers us a wider range of goods, closer to hand and cheaper to buy than the legacy wagon load-railway yard model - is "paying its way" (in the way that road users are in general) or whether the private cars are "excessively" (open to definition!) internally subsidising it? In understanding this, as always, I think facts are the only way to understand this (I'm an Engineer!) [just seems like there is mostly emotional/wishful thinking here !]

 

[corfield]

squizzler - interesting viewpoints but devoid of any actual facts.

In the Edwardian age, the vast majority of people did not have access to all these things you refer to (most living in pretty horrible poverty) so only relatively few benefitted/could afford the setup and the array of things that people saw as essential was a fraction of what we expect now. That has changed with mass consumption by/for all. Throw in population growth and the urban spread of living and it should be no surprise that the model that was prevalent then (which to be frank, didn't support itself economically anyway) evolved into what we have now.

"get rid of lorries" / "sell and produce locally". This presupposes there is a choice. That wagonload / local produce was similarly decided away for instance. Reality is that things evolve - wagonload died over a long time, trucks developed over a long time, logistics models developed over a long time. Billions of decisions made by millions of people in thousands of roles led to all that happening. Thinking it can go backwards by making a centralised decision is really misunderstanding how things change.

Again, thinking "oil running out" will help get what you want is very wishful thinking. I get the very strong impression you've decided the answer is Edwardian style wagonload freight to every possible location, and now see the world through the prism of "how do we get to that". I'm pretty certain that is going to be a very frustrating and unsuccessful view.

For instance, it is far more likely that battery technology will give a viable electric truck (already may be the case) than it won't. Demand spurs supply. Wasting money on passively providing rail spurs to all "commercial developments" (logistics hubs / shopping centres ??) would be a ludicrous decision.

 

[squizzler]

I get the very strong impression you've decided the answer is Edwardian style wagonload freight to every possible location

And I get the very strong impression that you decided what straw man arguments you want to put in my mouth before skimming the post for suitable snippets you can quote out of context

 

[B&I]

Clearly road users pay taxes directly related to road use, the sum of which is vastly greater than spent on providing the road system. Notably it is car/truck owners and drivers that pay, with all the other users receiving the benefits for no directly related taxes.

In contrast, rail users do not pay sufficient fares to cover that spent providing the rail system.

No matter how you cut the fares/direct/indirect/general taxation semantics, or try to smear those you dislike - the facts remain true. And the numbers aren't even close.

So, again, reasonable options are a combination of (1) make rail users pay more to cover the cost of the system they use, (2) use the money raised from road users to invest more in the road system, (3) reduce the amount road users pay.

Of course, (2) and (3) come at a cost, reducing the amount that other expenditures can be subsidised, including rail.

Again - my interest is whether the HGV model we have now, which is undoubtedly far more flexible and delivers us a wider range of goods, closer to hand and cheaper to buy than the legacy wagon load-railway yard model - is "paying its way" (in the way that road users are in general) or whether the private cars are "excessively" (open to definition!) internally subsidising it? In understanding this, as always, I think facts are the only way to understand this (I'm an Engineer!) [just seems like there is mostly emotional/wishful thinking here !]

And do road users pay for the damage they inflict on public health?

 

[Bald Rick]

And do road users pay for the damage they inflict on public health?

By a big margin, yes.

 

[Dai Corner]

I think some people here are vastly overestimating the importance of railways outside commuting into the very largest cities and some niche freight flows. They carried just 8% of the tonne-km of domestic freight in 2016, just over half that of water transport and a tenth of road's share. 10% of passenger-km are by train against 83% by road (78% by car, 5% by bus).

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/670447/tsgb0403.ods
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/489894/tsgb-2015.pdf


This weekend the busiest railway line in Wales, that between Cardiff and Newport, was closed. Nobody not travelling or working on it noticed. If the parallel M4 had been closed there would probably have been chaos in the two cities and the surrounding areas, large numbers of people unable to get to work and, without careful pre-planning, shortages of food and other goods in shops.

I'm not anti-rail by any means but I am realistic about its contribution to society.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The total cost of road maintenance in the UK by all public authorities is a little short of £5bn pa (source: Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey; TfL accounts; Highways England and Transport Scotland accounts). The total capital investment in new road project by all authorities in the UK is around £3bn pa (and we are in a road building 'spree' at present) (Source CBT).

Vehicle excise duty alone brings in just short of £6bn a year (HMRC) Fuel duty is £28bn* (HMRC). VAT on fuel adds another £9bn (HMRC). VAT on the purchase of new cars for private use brings in at least £5bn (my calcs, based on SMMT data, almost certainly underestimated).

Taken together the road transport industry contributes getting on for £50bn a year though direct taxation. Compared to £8bn a year in direct costs. The difference pays for nearly 40% of the NHS.

Of course there are indirect costs of the road industry (eg CO2, other pollutants, cost of accidents). But then there are other taxes too, such as Insurance Premium Tax (well over £1bn on vehicles alone, possibly twice that) not to mention tolls. Just the London congestion charge plus Dartford and Severn crossings generated half a billon last year.

I think the issue is how much the 'indirect' costs amount to. This document seems to give good reason to believe that the indirect costs may well add up to a lot more than the £50bn a year that you say is taken in direct taxation. If that is the case, then you could reasonably deduce that car and lorry journeys are on balance subsidised.

However there are other costs to society as a result of our existing car-dependent transport patterns. In 2009 a Cabinet Office Strategy Unit report on urban transport attempted to quantify the costs of our existing urban transport patterns. Working with the Department for Transport, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), they arrived at the costs shown here:

After that quote there follows a graph suggesting:

• Excess delays £10.9bn
• Accidents £8.7bn
• Poor air quality £4.5-£10.6bn
• Physical inactivity £9.8bn
• Greenhouse gas emissions £1.2-£3.7bn
• Noise amenity £3-£5bn

That makes a total of between £38 and £49bn for urban areas only. And the report then observes:

It is important to note that the report makes no attempt to quantify the external costs of negative social impacts, despite referring to reduced social cohesion and interaction as a result of traffic. Yet research in Norway estimated that the cost of community severance (the ‘barrier effect’ due to transport infrastructure such as busy roads) is greater than the estimated cost of noise and almost equal to the cost of air pollution.

The Cabinet Office report also excludes the impacts of noise pollution on health, productivity and the ecosystem and does not attempt to quantify ‘quality of life’ impacts of the built environment. However it acknowledges that all these areas could represent significant additional costs, mentioning for instance an additional £4-5 billion for noise impacts on health and productivity alone.

The main proviso in this is that the document is obviously produced by environmental campaigners, and I don't know how reliable it is, or how the claimed figures are calculated. But eyeballing the figures, they don't seem obviously unreasonable to me. And it's certainly suggestive that indirect costs are pretty high.

 

[B&I]

By a big margin, yes.

Where are the figures for the costs inflicted on public health? And if you don't know that, how do you know that road users cover them?

 

[PeterC]

The comment above about just in time delivery by rail reminded me that the shelf life of milk after purchase is far longer than it use to be in my young days.

I am sure that with small containers, modern computers to do the scheduling and the infrastructure that we had 60 years ago rail economically could compete for a lot more traffic (I did NOT say all traffic, just more). Now, with so much infrastructure sold off and built over that isn't feasible.

 

[DarloRich]

There are several posters here detached from reality. They seem to want us to return to some mythical day where the little tank engine chuntered, profitably, up the branch line dropping of a van for Farmer Giles here and a van for Farmer Smith there and a coal wagon for Jones & Co at Little Snoddlington. It is a fantasy.

There are several posters setting out rational reasons why the supermarket distribution system works the way it does and why rail will struggle to win the majority of that traffic. I can see a case for more bulk loads into massive distribution hubs ( like at Daventry) but no case for the individual wagon loads from there to each individual supermarket or the local distribution centre. It just doesn't make economic sense.

Also, we should also consider that many super market chains have branched out into the convenience store sector with their variations of the "local" concept. Those shops take their produce from the same hub as the megaplex and via the same distribution rounds. Consider the likes of CO-OP. They have a network of small, local stores often in remote places. Some of their stores are in very remote locations. How do we serve them?

 

[furnessvale]

There are several posters here detached from reality. They seem to want us to return to some mythical day where the little tank engine chuntered, profitably, up the branch line dropping of a van for Farmer Giles here and a van for Farmer Smith there and a coal wagon for Jones & Co at Little Snoddlington. It is a fantasy.

There are several posters setting out rational reasons why the supermarket distribution system works the way it does and why rail will struggle to win the majority of that traffic. I can see a case for more bulk loads into massive distribution hubs ( like at Daventry) but no case for the individual wagon loads from there to each individual supermarket or the local distribution centre. It just doesn't make economic sense.

Also, we should also consider that many super market chains have branched out into the convenience store sector with their variations of the "local" concept. Those shops take their produce from the same hub as the megaplex and via the same distribution rounds. Consider the likes of CO-OP. They have a network of small, local stores often in remote places. Some of their stores are in very remote locations. How do we serve them?

I don't recognise having said anything that appears in your first paragraph.

I have never suggested rail could win the MAJORITY of the traffic under discussion. I have suggested that rail could win MORE traffic, especially by the use of shared container trains, as the Co-op Asda and others do, not wagonload. The whole concept of the trains in and out of DIRFT is supply to and from local DCs, which you say does not make economic sense. I have never suggested supplying individual supermarkets by rail, although Tesco's Inverness operation is just that, with rail trunk and final delivery by road. Other areas in the UK mainland are currently under investigation for similar operations but, as with anything rail, it is painfully slow.

 

[8H]

The substantive and genuinely interesting point is that from the original poster, should more supermarket goods go by rail and be better connected.

There have been the usual stream of ultra orthodox know alls who tell us more or less everything goes by lorries or white vans and it always will until hell freezes over, and then, we have alternative suggestions roundly rubbished by the “realists”

Different means of distribution will happen, the present is no more set in stone than the past was. Working out how Rail can play a bigger part in future is much more useful than tutting and spluttering and thanks to those with positive interesting suggestions to date.

The environmental damage of internal combustion is simply unsustainable, I suggest the doubters get their old tin boxes of Lakeland Crayons out and do something useful

 

[najaB]

The environmental damage of internal combustion is simply unsustainable,

While this is (arguably) true, it's not a finishing blow for road transport as the IC engine is on its way out and I suspect within 20 years it will be largely a historical footnote.

 

[8H]

Yes you are correct, I am sure road transport will never be finished, but I suspect it may well be substantially modified and reduced.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The environmental damage of internal combustion is simply unsustainable, I suggest the doubters get their old tin boxes of Lakeland Crayons out and do something useful

While this is (arguably) true, it's not a finishing blow for road transport as the IC engine is on its way out and I suspect within 20 years it will be largely a historical footnote.

I think it's more than the internal combustion engine. I live in London, but a part of London that is far less congested than most of London. Yet even here, I would say that the area is basically ruined by too many road vehicles - in this area, mainly private cars but some lorries. Parked cars take up about half the width of most of the residential streets, often on the pavements, leaving little room for anyone to actually go anywhere (whether walking, cycling or - ironically - driving). The noise in much of the area is continual - and of course would be much worse in areas that a lot of lorries pass through. For those people who do drive, parking is a nightmare because there are so many other cars. Of the local shopping centres, two are basically huge free car parks with shops around them,making them much less pleasant to walk around than would otherwise be the case. One is a traditional high street but is so congested and noisy with traffic passing through that - well, I don't think I'd ever choose to go there unless I had to. Another is a reasonably pleasant and well pedestrianised traditional shopping centre, marred only by the neighbouring dual carriageway that cuts a portion of the area off from the main shopping centre, making it a nightmare to get to the other side. And of course, at busy times of the day, most local buses take about twice as long to get anywhere as they would if traffic were less. This makes the buses more expensive to run, and must impact on frequencies, making them more crowded (as well as simply wasting people's time).

I haven't mentioned the pollution, which is of course pretty awful. But if you removed the internal combustion engine and had everything powered by electric engines, all the other problems would still remain (with the possible exception of the noise being reduced). In fact I'd say that the impact on quality of life is such that personally I'd be more than happy to pay an extra thousand quid or so a year in income tax if it allowed the kind of investment in public transport/rail freight that could get a reasonable number of those vehicles off the road. (I realise that's subjective though, and most people probably wouldn't be willing to pay that).

Coming back to the thread, I do totally understand the point that distributors - especially supermarkets - need the kind of flexibility and quick deliveries that would be difficult to achieve by rail. But at the same time, I do think that the quality of life issues caused by the number of lorries (as well as cars) on the road do justify seriously looking into how you might get more freight transferred to rail, even if it did require more Government spending (and therefore tax) to achieve it. I would suspect though that while you may with some considerable investment be able to get other freight transferred to rail, getting much food transferred to rail is going to be next to impossible.

 

[DarloRich]

I don't recognise having said anything that appears in your first paragraph.

I have never suggested rail could win the MAJORITY of the traffic under discussion. I have suggested that rail could win MORE traffic, especially by the use of shared container trains, as the Co-op Asda and others do, not wagonload. The whole concept of the trains in and out of DIRFT is supply to and from local DCs, which you say does not make economic sense. I have never suggested supplying individual supermarkets by rail, although Tesco's Inverness operation is just that, with rail trunk and final delivery by road. Other areas in the UK mainland are currently under investigation for similar operations but, as with anything rail, it is painfully slow.

I didn't quote you personally. I thin you are right: Rail can win more bulk transport into national scale distribution centres. Rail is fantastic at moving non perishable, bulk goods over long distance but it is going to struggle on perishables. The network is not robust enough to guarantee delivery in time.

The substantive and genuinely interesting point is that from the original poster, should more supermarket goods go by rail and be better connected.

There have been the usual stream of ultra orthodox know alls who tell us more or less everything goes by lorries or white vans and it always will until hell freezes over, and then, we have alternative suggestions roundly rubbished by the “realists”

Different means of distribution will happen, the present is no more set in stone than the past was. Working out how Rail can play a bigger part in future is much more useful than tutting and spluttering and thanks to those with positive interesting suggestions to date.

The environmental damage of internal combustion is simply unsustainable, I suggest the doubters get their old tin boxes of Lakeland Crayons out and do something useful

How do you propose to make it economic for railways to deliver beyond a large distribution hub? The economics just don't add up. Railways only work on bulk loads. They aren't going to go back to wagon load freight. I could see an argument for offering one wagon in a larger consist to separate businesses but only between existing distribution centres and only if the product to be moved can be handled in the same way as the bulk load. Otherwise the time penalties and costs involved becomes unsustainable.

For road based distribution out of those hubs that is going to be hybrid or electrical vehicles - rail cant win that market. Rail also cant win a market if the distribution centres are co located with the ports.

 

[squizzler]

There are several posters here detached from reality. They seem to want us to return to some mythical day where the little tank engine chuntered, profitably, up the branch line dropping of a van for Farmer Giles here and a van for Farmer Smith there and a coal wagon for Jones & Co at Little Snoddlington. It is a fantasy.

I don't recognise having said anything that appears in your first paragraph.

I read this thread from start to finish and I cannot find anybody here saying that either. Could you quote from the specific posts?

The comment above about just in time delivery by rail reminded me that the shelf life of milk after purchase is far longer than it use to be in my young days.

I am sure that with small containers, modern computers to do the scheduling and the infrastructure that we had 60 years ago rail economically could compete for a lot more traffic (I did NOT say all traffic, just more). Now, with so much infrastructure sold off and built over that isn't feasible.

This. Describing a time when rail was the only mechanical land transport demonstrates that it is technically feasible to replace an exclusively lorry based distribution system with an exclusively rail based one, not that it is desirable to do so. Hence the share of goods on road or rail is a political decision not an inevitability determined by the laws of nature as defenders of the status quo would have us believe. Of course the opposite of a bad idea is usually another bad idea and, whilst I feel using lorries as the "one size fits all" option is sub optimal, the same goes for using nothing but rail. After all, when we start dealing with loads that fit on a 0-6-0 shunter dragging one box van you will basically just have recreated a lorry but on rails. The optimal solution will no doubt lie somewhere in the middle.

I still maintain that, whilst as a society we are very good at shipping things halfway round the world, yet this is not a desirable situation on many levels. I think a proper reconfiguration of our supply chains needs to have the scope to look at whether much of the movement of goods is socially and economically necessary, and how it might be discouraged. Of course having said that it will be claimed by some of the more zealous contributors that I advocate we all give up any manufactured goods and live in autarkic villages.

 

[richieb1971]

You have more chance of drone freight going to each store than you have a train.

I wondered why Morrisons doesn't use railfreight, I found this online if it helps -

https://tritaxbigbox.co.uk/pressrel...stribution-facility-birch-coppice-birmingham/

Located in Birch Coppice Business Park, Birmingham, the facility is within the ‘Golden Triangle’ of logistics and is one of the UK’s premier rail connected distribution parks, with direct access to the Birmingham Intermodal Freight Terminal, one of the UK’s most efficient rail freight terminals. The property also has excellent airport and motorway connectivity with close proximity to the M6, M1, M69 and M6 as well as Birmingham International and East Midlands airports. As an established core logistics location, it has attracted a significant number of major occupiers, including Bunzl, HiB, Volkswagen Group and UPS, in addition to the Company’s distribution facility let to Euro Car Parts.

Colin Godfrey, Partner of Tritax, commented:
“The acquisition of this Morrisons’ distribution facility, operated by Ocado, builds upon our strong working relationship with both retailers. The property will provide long term income in one of the most sought after locations within the ‘Golden Triangle’ providing access to 85% of the UK within 4.5 hours.

Our portfolio now comprises 38 UK Big Box logistics assets.

 

[DarloRich]

I read this thread from start to finish and I cannot find anybody here saying that either. Could you quote from the specific posts?

A couple are set out below

How did our railway go from having Marshaling yards with random carrying goods vans to having only unified freight trains, and its still too expensive to compete with the road? I'm all for the unified freight trains, but I don't think it should cost more than hauling by road. The government should change the rulings in order to get freight off the roads as that would provide benefits elsewhere, not just in pockets.

By the Edwardian age many time sensitive goods were being sent by rail. Fish made its way to every chippy and fresh milk to every corner-shop using rail. Newspapers got their product to every corner of the land each and every day by train. It was not just distribution from national scale companies either - the consumer of the day could send off for stuff from small producers and have it delivered before it spoiled. This was done with steam trains, primitive refrigeration (probably just a block of ice or two), paperwork using actual paper and no satellite tracking. Yet it still worked. Why? Because it had to. This shows that almost universal rail based logistics is possible including for time sensitive goods.

We haven't the will (and its probably not desirable) get rid of lorries altogether, of course, not until the oil runs out or we find something better. And whilst we are rail enthusiasts there is not a lot of benefit in substituting harmful lorries for less harmful trains if the mode of business is all wrong. I personally feel that the logistics needs to change wholesale. Why do we need so many food miles? Should we as a nation produce and sell food more locally? Is a just-in-time supply chain sufficiently resilient in the case of disruption or national emergency? Don't forget all this ties in with other debates we are having. Don't like the amount of plastic packaging used in food shops? Maybe its something to do with the number of journeys we expect food to survive whilst looking fresh.

I still maintain that, whilst as a society we are very good at shipping things halfway round the world, yet this is not a desirable situation on many levels. I think a proper reconfiguration of our supply chains needs to have the scope to look at whether much of the movement of goods is socially and economically necessary, and how it might be discouraged. Of course having said that it will be claimed by some of the more zealous contributors that I advocate we all give up any manufactured goods and live in autarkic villages.

 

[squizzler]

There are several posters here detached from reality. They seem to want us to return to some mythical day where the little tank engine chuntered, profitably, up the branch line dropping of a van for Farmer Giles here and a van for Farmer Smith there and a coal wagon for Jones & Co at Little Snoddlington. It is a fantasy.

I read this thread from start to finish and I cannot find anybody here saying that either. Could you quote from the specific posts?

A couple are set out below

The posts you have provided say noting of the sort. And I should know because I wrote a couple of them!

If our current system of providing society with its goods were so self-evidently rational, why do those defending it need to hide behind so many straw man arguments?

 

[DarloRich]

The posts you have provided say noting of the sort. And I should know because I wrote a couple of them!

If our current system of providing society with its goods were so self-evidently rational, why do those defending it need to hide behind so many straw man arguments?

you clearly seek a return to some mythical past where everyone bought their eggs from the shop on the corner and they came from the farm down the road. It isnt going to happen on a large scale. Logistics is not going to change wholesale.

 

[Freightmaster]

you clearly seek a return to some mythical past...

I think that sums ups rail enthusiasts' 'rose tinted' view on life in general, not just railfreight!!


MARK

 

[furnessvale]

For road based distribution out of those hubs that is going to be hybrid or electrical vehicles - rail cant win that market. Rail also cant win a market if the distribution centres are co located with the ports.

That is only true for freight that has been rendered down to the individual lorry load for delivery within the effective range of road haulage.

Those same ports have container trains serving many long distance routes carrying individual containers for many different shipping companies and agents. I am sure that even now the FOCs are well aware of the move to DCs at the port, and will be courting the companies involved to trunk those individual loads on current and future services to Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds etc, etc.

 

[DarloRich]

That is only true for freight that has been rendered down to the individual lorry load for delivery within the effective range of road haulage.

Those same ports have container trains serving many long distance routes carrying individual containers for many different shipping companies and agents. I am sure that even now the FOCs are well aware of the move to DCs at the port, and will be courting the companies involved to trunk those individual loads on current and future services to Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds etc, etc.

but would they need to do so? The supermarkets could go to a number of port based distribution hubs. Rail only works by taking that bulk load from the port to the distribution centre. If that centralised distribution system is broken up rail will struggle to hold let alone grow market share. I don't know enough about the costs of a devolved system versus a cntralised system to judge.

 

[squizzler]

Of course having said that it will be claimed by some of the more zealous contributors that I advocate we all give up any manufactured goods and live in autarkic villages.

Groan. Didn't have to wait long, did I...

you clearly seek a return to some mythical past where everyone bought their eggs from the shop on the corner and they came from the farm down the road.

Huh - When did I refer to eggs? You wouldn't have to buy their eggs from the shop on the corner. Don't you have a back garden suitable for keeping poultry

 

[furnessvale]

but would they need to do so? The supermarkets could go to a number of port based distribution hubs. Rail only works by taking that bulk load from the port to the distribution centre. If that centralised distribution system is broken up rail will struggle to hold let alone grow market share. I don't know enough about the costs of a devolved system versus a cntralised system to judge.

How are supermarkets going to get their goods to several port based hubs? Possibly by using sea based feeder services but certainly not by using the main deep sea shipper who only makes one call in the UK. They could use road between the big southern ports but then the individual lorry loads for the midlands and north still have to leave those ports. Just like individual containers, that lorry load can be trunked to Manchester for onward delivery by road. The terminals and rail services are already in place.

 

[HowardGWR]

Cheaper ≡ discount.

To me, discount means, the more you buy the cheaper it gets. There is no difference between LIDL and Tesco and Morrisons, in our area anyway. Yes they all have a few 'buy two get one free' type items, but one does not differ in that from another. Neither do any 'pile it high' any more than the others. LIDL is just cheaper.
Regarding distribution for supermarkets, the notion that rail could compete with the HGV is ridiculous. I used to work in this field, so claim knowledge.

 

[8H]

I have started buying eggs in a wood on a footpath by a gate where they are left in a clear plastic box!

Pick up a carton, leave the money inside.

This will be quoted shortly to prove I want the whole of Britain doing this by Wednesday this week!!

Nobody wants to return to the past (well maybe except Nigel Farridge )

What is happening in this thread is that several posters are justifiably questioning the current distribution systems which aren’t sustainable long term.

That is a reasonable argument.

 

[DarloRich]

How are supermarkets going to get their goods to several port based hubs? Possibly by using sea based feeder services but certainly not by using the main deep sea shipper who only makes one call in the UK. They could use road between the big southern ports but then the individual lorry loads for the midlands and north still have to leave those ports. Just like individual containers, that lorry load can be trunked to Manchester for onward delivery by road. The terminals and rail services are already in place.

it all depends what offers the most profit - personally I prefer the large central hub concept ( or more accurately a number of large hubs ) that can service the downstream distribution network.