End of the "golden age" of road haulage could create opportunities for rail?

[Oxfordblues]

Are we witnessing the end of the "golden age" of road haulage?

For decades rail-freight traffic was lost to road haulage, which proved to be cheaper, more flexible and less hidebound by restrictive practices. The nationalised railway had little of the enterprise of privately-owned lorry operators and rail traffic haemorrhaged. The government encouraged this trend by building new motorways and failing to charge tolls for using them. Road haulage boomed as one after another rail customers switched, replacing ancient 12-ton rail vans with modern juggernauts. EU membership brought thousands of Romanian truck drivers who at home could earn as little as £2.30 per hour.

Now in 2021 most of the Romanians have gone home and there is a severe shortage of drivers. The Road Haulage Association currently claim a shortfall of 100,000. This is the same RHA that used to champion road as being "more efficient" than rail - even though one train driver can replace 50 lorry drivers!

And now there is the emissions issue. Transport accounts for 30% of the UK's carbon dioxide pollution, yet there is no viable electrically-propelled HGV. Yesterday Secretary of State Grant Schapps suggested that Amazon should switch trunk hauls to rail, even threatening to phase-out HGVs which are not zero-carbon by 2050.

All this presents huge opportunities for rail freight, especially in the intermodal sector. For example: if you have a box at a port and want to send it by road to an inland warehouse, can you afford to wait a few days for a driver or pay a bit more and load it on a train? And will it be acceptable to your environmentally-aware customers that you've used a seriously-polluting truck to save a bit of money?

Your thoughts please!

 

[nmsq]

Are we witnessing the end of the "golden age" of road haulage?

For decades rail-freight traffic was lost to road haulage, which proved to be cheaper, more flexible and less hidebound by restrictive practices. The nationalised railway had little of the enterprise of privately-owned lorry operators and rail traffic haemorrhaged. The government encouraged this trend by building new motorways and failing to charge tolls for using them. Road haulage boomed as one after another rail customers switched, replacing ancient 12-ton rail vans with modern juggernauts. EU membership brought thousands of Romanian truck drivers who at home could earn as little as £2.30 per hour.

Now in 2021 most of the Romanians have gone home and there is a severe shortage of drivers. The Road Haulage Association currently claim a shortfall of 100,000. This is the same RHA that used to champion road as being "more efficient" than rail - even though one train driver can replace 50 lorry drivers!

And now there is the emissions issue. Transport accounts for 30% of the UK's carbon dioxide pollution, yet there is no viable electrically-propelled HGV. Yesterday Secretary of State Grant Schapps suggested that Amazon should switch trunk hauls to rail, even threatening to phase-out HGVs which are not zero-carbon by 2050.

All this presents huge opportunities for rail freight, especially in the intermodal sector. For example: if you have a box at a port and want to send it by road to an inland warehouse, can you afford to wait a few days for a driver or pay a bit more and load it on a train? And will it be acceptable to your environmentally-aware customers that you've used a seriously-polluting truck to save a bit of money?

Your thoughts please!

Other than cost the key issue for rail to resolve must surely be capacity at pinch points across the network. For example, Reading West to Southcote Jn. Didcot to Swindon and many more across the country.

 

[The Planner]

You will still need a driver to get it from the freight terminal to the end customer.

 

[Peregrine 4903]

You will still need a driver to get it from the freight terminal to the end customer.

Just get thousands of drones and problem solved . This is not a serious suggestion by the way.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You will still need a driver to get it from the freight terminal to the end customer.

Not as many if they are doing short shuttles all day instead of one long journey.

 

[deltic]

The answer is no - you are more likely to see increased demand to allow 60 tonne HGVs

 

[quantinghome]

For decades rail-freight traffic was lost to road haulage, which proved to be cheaper, more flexible and less hidebound by restrictive practices. The nationalised railway had little of the enterprise of privately-owned lorry operators and rail traffic haemorrhaged. The government encouraged this trend by building new motorways and failing to charge tolls for using them. Road haulage boomed as one after another rail customers switched, replacing ancient 12-ton rail vans with modern juggernauts. EU membership brought thousands of Romanian truck drivers who at home could earn as little as £2.30 per hour.

It's not really anything to do with being more or less enterprising. Road haulage 'won' quite simply because it is inherently cheaper and more flexible for short to medium length journeys. Freight had provided pretty much all the profit on the railway, and the pre-nationalised companies, keen to maintain their revenue against rising competition, were already lobbying government for a fair deal i.e. to stop unfair competition from road freight in the 1930s and removing the 'common carrier' obligations which had been imposed by the government on the railway in the 19th century. The government declined.

Post-nationalised BR continued to run freight on a fully commercial basis, but quickly recognised they could only compete over longer distance over 200+ miles. With common carrier still a requirement this required the building of massive marshalling yards, but these failed to turn things round and quickly became moribund.

The railways could probably have adapted more quickly to competition from roads, but that would have probably mean implementing things like merry-go-round years earlier. But however efficient and enterprising the railways could have been, and however accommodating the government could have been to removing historical baggage such as common carrier there was never going to be any real future for short haul freight.

Look at other countries for examples of how rail freight could have developed - it's only really competitive against road in large countries like USA, Russia, India and China.

 

[HSTEd]

Now in 2021 most of the Romanians have gone home and there is a severe shortage of drivers. The Road Haulage Association currently claim a shortfall of 100,000. This is the same RHA that used to champion road as being "more efficient" than rail - even though one train driver can replace 50 lorry drivers!

That is an extremely optimistic calculationf or rail in the modern era, given the restrictions of the loading gauge and the trend towards very tall lorry trailers - and we could solve this by just allowing longer and heavier lorries!

And now there is the emissions issue. Transport accounts for 30% of the UK's carbon dioxide pollution, yet there is no viable electrically-propelled HGV. Yesterday Secretary of State Grant Schapps suggested that Amazon should switch trunk hauls to rail, even threatening to phase-out HGVs which are not zero-carbon by 2050.

It would be far cheaper to use eHighway than throw money at the rail freight industry as it exists today.

The rail freight industry is woefully unprepared to modernise to the extent necessary to take any significant traffic from the road sector.

It is still using nearly 30 year old diesel locomotives as its main haul fleet! It isn't ready for the brave new world.

 

[Bald Rick]

We have a thread like this, seemingly, every couple of weeks now.

Rail already has a pretty decent share of the deep sea intermodal market. I forget the exact numbers but I think rail has more than half the market share of boxes landed at the big ports that need to travel more than 100 miles.

Rail is best for high volume / high weight flows over 50 miles, and medium volume flows over 100 miles.

Rail is not (at all) suited to most modern logistics operations, due to their networks which rely on ‘little and often’ transport on a multitude of network links. And their hubs are built accordingly, and not often anywhere convenient for rail, nor configured to accommodate rail.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Post-nationalised BR continued to run freight on a fully commercial basis, but quickly recognised they could only compete over longer distance over 200+ miles. With common carrier still a requirement this required the building of massive marshalling yards, but these failed to turn things round and quickly became moribund.

This keeps trotting out but is a complete misunderstanding/mis-representation.

The Common Carrier obligations were all about consistency, transparency and equality of pricing (so that the carrier could not discriminate unfairly between customers or refuse their traffic) between places where they offered to do business. There was nothing to compel a railway company or BR to continue to keep every goods depot or branch line open or to build new marshalling yards. Many lines and stations had already closed or lost their good facilities whilst the Common Carrier obligations applied.

In Gourvish's definitive 'British Railways 1948-73 - A Business History' I don't think that the obligation rates a single mention although there are some pretty withering comments about marshalling yards and other freight policies of the 1950s in Chapter 8.

 

[quantinghome]

That's a useful correction, thank you. I was likely misreading what I had read in Sim Harris' 'the railway dilemma' and Gerry Fiennes' classic 'I tried to run a railway'.

I guess the point is then that common carrier still meant BR couldn't refuse a customer with a single wagonload?

 

[swt_passenger]

We have a thread like this, seemingly, every couple of weeks now.

Rail already has a pretty decent share of the deep sea intermodal market. I forget the exact numbers but I think rail has more than half the market share of boxes landed at the big ports that need to travel more than 100 miles.

Rail is best for high volume / high weight flows over 50 miles, and medium volume flows over 100 miles.

Rail is not (at all) suited to most modern logistics operations, due to their networks which rely on ‘little and often’ transport on a multitude of network links. And their hubs are built accordingly, and not often anywhere convenient for rail, nor configured to accommodate rail.

Don’t we just. I find it surprising that there seem to be long term members who keep missing the points you and others have regularly made. There’s a lot of wishful thinking about freight, the thread only a few weeks ago about reopening branch lines for local freight being typical…

 

[tbtc]

Don't get me wrong, I like railways, I like trains, I'd like there to be more of both - I grew up watching freight trains (because the random nature of them is fun when you're young, compared to the "boring" clock face passenger services with uniform stock - freight is sporadic, all of these daily/weekly flows that may or may not run, the huge variety of locomotives that BR might allocate - in the days before 66s!)... but, much as I'd like to believe, it's hard to share the optimism of some on this thread that there are huge numbers of flows out there where freight could move from road to rail - would love to see it but, realistically... not convinced

Now in 2021 most of the Romanians have gone home and there is a severe shortage of drivers. The Road Haulage Association currently claim a shortfall of 100,000. This is the same RHA that used to champion road as being "more efficient" than rail - even though one train driver can replace 50 lorry drivers!

I mean, that's true, in the way that a two coach DMU could replace one hundred and fifty drivers... but only on flows where you have that number of people/goods travelling between the same two points at the same time - sometimes heavy rail can be competitive at doing that, but often it isn't

How many examples are there of where a train could be hauling fifty wagons but the company decide to send them by road instead? And what reasons are there for that decision? I'd look into this kind of thing first... (e.g. Tesco got a lot of publicity for their Inverness trains but the vast majority of supermarket traffic doesn't seem suited to railways)

if you have a box at a port and want to send it by road to an inland warehouse, can you afford to wait a few days for a driver or pay a bit more and load it on a train? And will it be acceptable to your environmentally-aware customers that you've used a seriously-polluting truck to save a bit of money?

1. Again, how many of those flows are there where rail could be competitive but rail isn't used? Are there really lots of other flows where dozens of lorries all need to get between exactly the two same points at the same time? (rather than the flexibility that the truck drivers can offer)
2. If the kind of people buying cheap stuff on ASOS/ Amazon etc were that interested in the environment, they wouldn't be ordering so much cheap stuff on ASOS/ Amazon etc - I don't think they care about the journey (in the way that I don't think about how sausages are made when I'm eating one)

 

[Bald Rick]

Don’t we just. I find it surprising that there seem to be long term members who keep missing the points you and others have regularly made.

I find it surprising that I can be bothered to keep making the points. But I live in hope that one day the message will get through.

 

[A0wen]

Don’t we just. I find it surprising that there seem to be long term members who keep missing the points you and others have regularly made. There’s a lot of wishful thinking about freight, the thread only a few weeks ago about reopening branch lines for local freight being typical…

Yes that one was particularly entertaining wasn't it ? Let's rebuild a load of marginal branch lines in an attempt to solve a problem they are entirely unsuited for.......

I find it surprising that I can be bothered to keep making the points. But I live in hope that one day the message will get through.

If it's any consolation, you are not alone.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

And now there is the emissions issue. Transport accounts for 30% of the UK's carbon dioxide pollution, yet there is no viable electrically-propelled HGV. Yesterday Secretary of State Grant Schapps suggested that Amazon should switch trunk hauls to rail, even threatening to phase-out HGVs which are not zero-carbon by 2050.

I look forward to Amazon's application for its giant warehouse at Ridgmont (Bletchley-Bedford line) to be rail connected...
It's just over the fence from the railway (on the site of an old brick works).

 

[Dr Hoo]

I look forward to Amazon's application for its giant warehouse at Ridgmont (Bletchley-Bedford line) to be rail connected...
It's just over the fence from the railway (on the site of an old brick works).

These things always sound like a nice idea but even a massive 1,000,000 sq ft shed is unlikely to justify a single container train per day of either deliveries or despatches from/to a single point. Especially with a multi-product, multi-supplier, multi-customer operation like Amazon. Let alone if the site is currently on an awkward un-electrified branch line.

 

[Bald Rick]

I look forward to Amazon's application for its giant warehouse at Ridgmont (Bletchley-Bedford line) to be rail connected...
It's just over the fence from the railway (on the site of an old brick works).

That’s a fulfilment centre. Receives goods in various consignment sizes from all parts of the country up to a lorry load every day. Dispatches in individual packets to local(ish) addresses. Not ideal for rail !

 

[paul1609]

Are we witnessing the end of the "golden age" of road haulage?

For decades rail-freight traffic was lost to road haulage, which proved to be cheaper, more flexible and less hidebound by restrictive practices. The nationalised railway had little of the enterprise of privately-owned lorry operators and rail traffic haemorrhaged. The government encouraged this trend by building new motorways and failing to charge tolls for using them. Road haulage boomed as one after another rail customers switched, replacing ancient 12-ton rail vans with modern juggernauts. EU membership brought thousands of Romanian truck drivers who at home could earn as little as £2.30 per hour.

Now in 2021 most of the Romanians have gone home and there is a severe shortage of drivers. The Road Haulage Association currently claim a shortfall of 100,000. This is the same RHA that used to champion road as being "more efficient" than rail - even though one train driver can replace 50 lorry drivers!

And now there is the emissions issue. Transport accounts for 30% of the UK's carbon dioxide pollution, yet there is no viable electrically-propelled HGV. Yesterday Secretary of State Grant Schapps suggested that Amazon should switch trunk hauls to rail, even threatening to phase-out HGVs which are not zero-carbon by 2050.

All this presents huge opportunities for rail freight, especially in the intermodal sector. For example: if you have a box at a port and want to send it by road to an inland warehouse, can you afford to wait a few days for a driver or pay a bit more and load it on a train? And will it be acceptable to your environmentally-aware customers that you've used a seriously-polluting truck to save a bit of money?

Your thoughts please!

On the emissions issue Road transport is responsible for 27% of the UKs carbon dioxide pollution according to the latest government figures, HGVs are less than 5%. Electric Cars are currently less polluting per passenger than the average train journey in the UK and coaches much less.

 

[Watershed]

Are we witnessing the end of the "golden age" of road haulage?

ICE road haulage? Perhaps. But road haulage as a whole? Not by a long shot.

For decades rail-freight traffic was lost to road haulage, which proved to be cheaper, more flexible and less hidebound by restrictive practices

And that is still mostly the way it goes. Rail freight is only really cheaper on long, consistent flows that are geographically well suited to the rail network. And even there, that is only because it is indirectly subsidised - as freight operators don't pay anything remotely close to their fair share of NR's fixed costs.

Now in 2021 most of the Romanians have gone home and there is a severe shortage of drivers. The Road Haulage Association currently claim a shortfall of 100,000. This is the same RHA that used to champion road as being "more efficient" than rail - even though one train driver can replace 50 lorry drivers!

That's only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that driving tests were paused by the DVSA for a long time. Hence there is now a backlog of candidates waiting to do a test.

Not all that dissimilar to what has happened at a lot of train companies. Only, replace "tests" with "route/traction knowledge".

 

[colchesterken]

will the 321 conversion work, it seems a good idea to move home delivery parcels
to bases around the place and then pass to the white vans

 

[Bald Rick]

will the 321 conversion work, it seems a good idea to move home delivery parcels
to bases around the place and then pass to the white vans

Move them from where (exactly) to where (exactly)? And when?

Typically a ‘white van’ will do a couple of full rounds from the distribution hub a day, covering drops over a wide range of a town / City. How would this work using a train for part of the trip?

 

[Irascible]

will the 321 conversion work, it seems a good idea to move home delivery parcels
to bases around the place and then pass to the white vans

That works - provided a trainload of parcels are arriving at the distribution centre at the same time, from the same place. That is a major and not remotely guaranteed "if". I'd love to see logistics traffic move to rail more, but that would need an attitude shift all the way to customers & a redesign of the network, so I'm really not waiting for that...

"Use bigger lorries" also runs foul of this problem, of course.

Edit: the whole discussion is really about the return of more traditional wagonload freight. We still have wagonload freight - every container train - but no big network of terminal facilities, and currently the cost of switching mode favours just throwing containers on lorries. It's not beyond our technology to make changes there, but until there's a need there's not going to be any change. And even then, you've still got to wait for a train somewhere.

 

[InOban]

The damage done to a road is proportional to a very high power of the axle load. As a result LGVs pay far less in VED than the damage they do to the road. Hence LGVs are also being subsidised.

But the killer for most rail freight is that transhipment costs than the actual journey. Much cheaper to send a full tanker to a petrol station than to send a train to a local distribution centre and transfer it to local tankers

 

[Watershed]

The damage done to a road is proportional to a very high power of the axle load. As a result LGVs pay far less in VED than the damage they do to the road. Hence LGVs are also being subsidised.

Fuel duty revenue far exceeds the cost of road maintenance, albeit this is still tilted in favour of LGVs - as they pay less fuel duty per £ of damage they cause.

But really, that's small fry compared to the indirect and massive 'subsidy' that road transport receives, by being allowed to impose societal costs (pollution, congestion, noise etc.) for free.

Rail freight will always face an uphill challenge against that kind of competition.

 

[The Ham]

On the emissions issue Road transport is responsible for 27% of the UKs carbon dioxide pollution according to the latest government figures, HGVs are less than 5%. Electric Cars are currently less polluting per passenger than the average train journey in the UK and coaches much less.

Electric cars are only just less than the average rail passenger emissions (given that in 2019/20 rail was recorded as 35.1g/km). However it wouldn't take much to reduce rail to be better (potentially stuff that's already going to happen in the next few years could get us there, like the new 8xx fleets and small amounts of electrification).

Conversely we're a long way from having 20% of cars as EV's and they are unlikely to reduce their carbon emissions by very much from where they are already at (especially given than any grid reductions would also benefit rail's emissions).

However even then the comparison is flawed. As those who use rail are more likely to walk/cycle more than those who own an EV. As such chances are based on all travel rail users could be better overall because they have a bigger proportion of near zero emission travel.

However even that is only part of the picture, as total rail maintenance emissions are lower (and comfortably so*) than the total for the strategic road network (SRN) (even though rail has over double the route miles).

*SRN 295,000 tonnes vs Rail's 248,000 tonnes.

Even the fact that there's about double the passenger km's undertaken by the SRN than Rail doesn't help overly much.

 

[ABB125]

The damage done to a road is proportional to a very high power of the axle load. As a result LGVs pay far less in VED than the damage they do to the road. Hence LGVs are also being subsidised.

Indeed, I believe it's something like the power of four or even five.
But I also read somewhere that the there's another factor which is even worse for road surfaces: the time between each wheel passing over a fixed point. So a 3-axle lorry trailer causes three compressions in very quick succession, compared with a van, which will cause only two compression which are also spaced further apart.
Combine this with the prevalence of "super single" tyres* instead of pairs of tyres, and you can see why road surfaces are in a bad state...


*so-called because they're super-useful at reducing costs for everyone except the highway maintenance people

 

[squizzler]

It is inevitable when a provocative idea is aired, in this instance, that logistics can possibly mean anything other than lorries, there will never be a shortage of apologists to the status quo come out the woodwork and denounce the very idea. Whilst the humble lorry will no doubt persist long into the future, there are signs that diversity of our supply trains can be increased. Diversity means resilience, and should be encouraged.

The Orion service - ignored in many of these conversations - is a great example of a niche where the future for rail travel seems bright. It must be considered that this is not a small scale government sponsored trial. I am pretty sure we have already had one of those, and now the industry seems to be serious about the concept, with nineteen class 319 derivatives. Not a massive fleet, but a robust statement of intent nonetheless. The class 321 is also a candidate for conversion to goods use.

Even if every 319 and 321 unit were converted to goods trains, the resulting fleet would only be a little over a couple of hundred strong. Compared to the thousands of full-size lorries in circulation (never mind vans and other delivery vehicles) they would only be a drop in the ocean, but would have greatly increase the viability of the railways which need to find new markets to replace the commuters and as consequence release passenger EMUs to conversion. A vibrant market for redundant passenger stock in freight service will fuel the demand for new trains. Passengers will pay less to travel, since goods traffic also contributes to network upkeep.

As such I have little sympathy for those that declare point blank that rail is "uneconomic" for all but bulk commodities like coal (remember that?) or freightliners. As a democracy, it is us that sets the rules of what is economic or not, and the climate emergency is adding an impetus for government to change the economic rules.

 

[Bald Rick]

Ok, so other than a few specialist flows, where are these express parcels trains going to run to, from and at what time?

 

[squizzler]

I gather they will be running to Scotland at first, with a network to follow - the following link on the company's website. I find this an exciting development, and has to be excellent news for goods by rail generally.

If we consider there are about 500 class 66s in GB hauling trains of around 750m length, I accept Orion's twenty EMUs is not a massive part of the UK railfreight scene, let alone goods traffic generally. But it is a promising - and not trivial - start which can be built on. If successful, whole fleets of redundant EMUs could be hoovered up by this new sector, solving at a stroke what to do with those which are surplus but not life expired. This latter point alone - getting return on assets that are already amortised, running between stations and terminals already built - seems disproportionately beneficial to the industry as a whole, as any surplus beyond the direct running costs is all profit.