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

[furnessvale]

I'm a bit uneasy about comparisons like this (taken from Greybeard33's quote)

Rail freight can obviously be a great way of carrying several lorryloads at once, but the suggestion that the average freight train is removing seventy six lorries from the roads feels a bit overhyped (especially as the average length is no more than a couple of dozen wagons, and surely the vast majority of rail freight flows are uni-directional - e.g. Hope Valley Cement or Buxton stone heads south full but the return journey is empty, whereas the likes of XPO/ Wincanton/Stobart are able to interwork flows so that a lorry from Southampton Docks to the Midlands is then carrying something from the Midlands to the south)?

I get the point that it's trying to make, and I'll probably be shot down as a heretic for saying something negative about the railway, but there's a difference between "certain rail wagons can carry the equivalent of three lorry loads, so a rake of twenty five trucks can sometimes carry the same as seventy five lorries" and "the average freight train carries the same as seventy something lorries"

(if there are lots of rakes of seventy six wagons behind a single 66 then I stand corrected, but I don't see such things in this neck of the woods!)

Not shot down as a heretic and there is a grain of truth in what you say. HOWEVER:-

You cannot compare a stone train to an XPO/Wincanton/Stobart HGV. Whilst the stone train is returning empty, so are the stone carrying HGVs on the same traffic.

On the other hand, trains working out of the major ports are carrying containers both ways, just like the competing HGVs.

Finally, you need nothing like 76 wagons behind a 66 to remove 76 HGVs from the roads when the payload of a rail aggregate wagon is 75-80 tonnes and the payload of the best HGVs in the same work is 29tonnes.

 

[HSTEd]

And then theres the practice of assuming a lorry load of general goods is equivalent to a single 40' high cube container.
When the volume of modern road trailers is dramatically greater than the volume of said container.

 

[furnessvale]

And then theres the practice of assuming a lorry load of general goods is equivalent to a single 40' high cube container.
When the volume of modern road trailers is dramatically greater than the volume of said container.

Correct......for that minority of freight that can cube out before weighing out.

A large percentage of even the standard 4.2m high dry goods trailers run around with fresh air above the load of a single deck of 1 tonne pallets. A standard 4.2m high trailer is the equivalent of a 2.9m swap body which can be carried within W10 loading gauge.

 

[Irascible]

We've all ( well most ) been waving a hand & saying "the driver shortages will be filled eventually" but I'm becoming slowly less convinced that we'll ever have a full complement. What do we do if we can't? shipping more with one driver starts hitting the same issues going by rail has. Rather than making grandiose plans to rebuild all our logistics what medium term contingency plans can we make that might involve more railfreight?

 

[The Ham]

We've all ( well most ) been waving a hand & saying "the driver shortages will be filled eventually" but I'm becoming slowly less convinced that we'll ever have a full complement. What do we do if we can't? shipping more with one driver starts hitting the same issues going by rail has. Rather than making grandiose plans to rebuild all our logistics what medium term contingency plans can we make that might involve more railfreight?

My view is that the drivers shortage is just the tip of the iceberg, as there's a ongoing shortage of working aged people with little chance of it changing any time soon (i.e. more over 65's than under 18's).

This year it's drivers, next year it'll be something else, with almost any industry needing to consider what it can do to carry on delivering it's goods/services with fewer staff.

If they don't they're likely to have to increase pay and conditions to retain staff.

 

[Bald Rick]

My view is that the drivers shortage is just the tip of the iceberg, as there's a ongoing shortage of working aged people with little chance of it changing any time soon (i.e. more over 65's than under 18's).

Agreed. It will be social care staff, or food production, or bus drivers, etc.

If they don't they're likely to have to increase pay and conditions to retain staff.

Or encourage immigration....

 

[Irascible]

Or encourage immigration....

Where from though? with the £ fallen vs the €, an environment pretty hostile to immigrants and a shortage of drivers elsewhere in the world, where are we going to find the population of Durham as trained HGV drivers? if they're not trained then we have to get them trained here, and that's not exactly going to be quick. Meanwhile our economy is going to hurt & make it even less attractive. There's a few ex drivers round here I've asked who've said ( in different words but with the same message ) they wouldn't go back for double the money, so it also doesn't seem like a job that'd really poach from other vocations unless it starts getting to unsustainable pay levels or somehow there's a large change in the entire industry.

If we somehow find 50k new drivers from a hat and then relaxed rules give the equivalent of say, 10k more ( that seems a bit of a stretch ), we're still short the size of a pretty large town, and we haven't considered drivers retiring for whatever reason. So, what else can we possibly do in the relatively immediate future? automation isn't going to help in this sort of timeframe. Abandon some product flow entirely? that starts hurting the economy again. I think we can rule out air freight, but between lgvs, rail & even coastal shipping is there any practical way to get more product moving? or are we doomed to gamble on finding a city's worth of drivers before we fall into recession?

 

[JamesT]

Where from though? with the £ fallen vs the €, an environment pretty hostile to immigrants and a shortage of drivers elsewhere in the world, where are we going to find the population of Durham as trained HGV drivers? if they're not trained then we have to get them trained here, and that's not exactly going to be quick. Meanwhile our economy is going to hurt & make it even less attractive. There's a few ex drivers round here I've asked who've said ( in different words but with the same message ) they wouldn't go back for double the money, so it also doesn't seem like a job that'd really poach from other vocations unless it starts getting to unsustainable pay levels or somehow there's a large change in the entire industry.

If we somehow find 50k new drivers from a hat and then relaxed rules give the equivalent of say, 10k more ( that seems a bit of a stretch ), we're still short the size of a pretty large town, and we haven't considered drivers retiring for whatever reason. So, what else can we possibly do in the relatively immediate future? automation isn't going to help in this sort of timeframe. Abandon some product flow entirely? that starts hurting the economy again. I think we can rule out air freight, but between lgvs, rail & even coastal shipping is there any practical way to get more product moving? or are we doomed to gamble on finding a city's worth of drivers before we fall into recession?

There are allegedly 600k drivers with an HGV licence in the UK who aren't currently working in the industry. So the short-term answer is to improve conditions sufficiently to get some of them back in. There are anecdotes of drivers swearing they wouldn't go back, but it's hard to say that none of them could be tempted by better pay.

The other big issue has been the way the DVLA has been essentially shutdown over the last 18 months. So new entrants couldn't get licenced even if they wanted to (meanwhile retiring drivers continued leaving). Getting that pipeline back up and running and getting more drivers through is going to be the most important way to solve this issue properly.

I think it's unlikely the shortage of drivers is going to push us into recession. The haulage industry has been moaning about a lack of drivers for years, it's taken the pandemic to push things to this state.

 

[HSTEd]

If they don't they're likely to have to increase pay and conditions to retain staff.

Probably the final nail in the coffin that kills most in person retail.

That and the disintegration of the travel industry and those worker's eventual reintegration into the workforce.

 

[Irascible]

There are allegedly 600k drivers with an HGV licence in the UK who aren't currently working in the industry. So the short-term answer is to improve conditions sufficiently to get some of them back in. There are anecdotes of drivers swearing they wouldn't go back, but it's hard to say that none of them could be tempted by better pay.

If they're a likely resource, then why have we got to this point already? how many of those are retired on health or just age grounds?

The other big issue has been the way the DVLA has been essentially shutdown over the last 18 months. So new entrants couldn't get licenced even if they wanted to (meanwhile retiring drivers continued leaving). Getting that pipeline back up and running and getting more drivers through is going to be the most important way to solve this issue properly.

I think it's unlikely the shortage of drivers is going to push us into recession. The haulage industry has been moaning about a lack of drivers for years, it's taken the pandemic to push things to this state.

Yes - the problem with no testing has certainly not helped at all. How many can they do a year? it's not just the pandemic, it's the losing the ready supply of cheap euroipean drivers too.

I'm not really worried about this causing a recession unless t gets so expensive that it drives inflation up in a way that stops people spending, or unless it goes on for years - I *am* a little worried about it going on for years. Just want some ideas for contingencies and what is actually possible here.

 

[JamesT]

Yes - the problem with no testing has certainly not helped at all. How many can they do a year? it's not just the pandemic, it's the losing the ready supply of cheap euroipean drivers too.

I'm not really worried about this causing a recession unless t gets so expensive that it drives inflation up in a way that stops people spending, or unless it goes on for years - I *am* a little worried about it going on for years. Just want some ideas for contingencies and what is actually possible here.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...government-measures-to-ease-risk-of-shortages talks about adding capacity for an additional 50k tests per year.

 

[Irascible]

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...government-measures-to-ease-risk-of-shortages talks about adding capacity for an additional 50k tests per year.

Training apparently takes 8-10 weeks - mostly for the paperwork to be processed by the looks of it, Driver training takes 5 days, and then you have to pass three practical tests as well as the previous theory. Every 5 years you need a week-long refresher. The training place I was looking at works 7 days a week, so if we assume they( and everyone else ) can run 340 days a year that's a bit under 150 drivers a day constantly to meet 50k. 150 drivers a day being passed I guess I can see, I'm not sure about the training aspect though... going to be a lucrative market for those retirees as trainers at least!

 

[The Ham]

Training apparently takes 8-10 weeks - mostly for the paperwork to be processed by the looks of it, Driver training takes 5 days, and then you have to pass three practical tests as well as the previous theory. Every 5 years you need a week-long refresher. The training place I was looking at works 7 days a week, so if we assume they( and everyone else ) can run 340 days a year that's a bit under 150 drivers a day constantly to meet 50k. 150 drivers a day being passed I guess I can see, I'm not sure about the training aspect though... going to be a lucrative market for those retirees as trainers at least!

There's a few things to consider, there's currently figures of 100,000 drivers sorry of what we need, so assuming that no one leaves the industry that's at least 2 years to get back to full strength. More likely 3 or maybe even 4, due to the age of a lot of the existing drivers and that existing drivers need to do their refresher courses.

Also that assumes that enough people actual want to train, I suspect not. Unless there's lots of extra pay and few other industries which would be impacted by the shift in people wishing to be drivers.

However hospitality has been struggling and had to offer pay increases to get more staff following lockdowns.

There's a shortage of engineers (or at least a lot being used for big projects which results in the same thing).

I wouldn't be surprised if other industries had similar recruitment difficulties.

Now whilst furlough has ended with the circa 1 million people it had been supporting, which will help in that they may well need a job (although I suspect some were working for lower pay whilst still on the scheme, so the overall increase in available staff may not be quite that large).

As I've said before there's going to be a need for more automation, even if that's as simple as more deliveries being unhook the trailer and take away the full/empty one (although there's a limit on which sites could facilitate that, certainly few supermarkets).

 

[squizzler]

I can't help but feel that if the lorries were re-nationalised and wasteful duplication of delivery routes etc were eliminated, there would be plenty of capacity to go around.

Let's bring back British Road Services - this time as Great British Road Services perhaps?

 

[A0wen]

I can't help but feel that if the lorries were re-nationalised and wasteful duplication of delivery routes etc were eliminated, there would be plenty of capacity to go around.

Let's bring back British Road Services - this time as Great British Road Services perhaps?

That's a ridiculous suggestion driven by ideology over pragmatism. There is no first or second world country in the world which has done that.

And what about companies like Lafarge who run their own fleet to ship aggregates? Or the supermarkets who run their own fleets? Are you saying they would be compelled to use the "national" freight carrier thereby losing control of their supply chain?

 

[deltic]

Interesting item in the FT yesterday about Orion Rail and getting parcel traffic back on the railway. The key problem they are facing is getting back loads to make it economic. So they can fill a train from London to Scotland but not in the reverse direction.

 

[matacaster]

Interesting item in the FT yesterday about Orion Rail and getting parcel traffic back on the railway. The key problem they are facing is getting back loads to make it economic. So they can fill a train from London to Scotland but not in the reverse direction.

Could a rapid conversion freight to passenger (and vice versa) be a possible answer? So freight config to Scotland, mostly passenger back. Would need clever design to swap seats in/out etc, but the likes of Elon musk's design teams might produce something?

 

[Dai Corner]

Could a rapid conversion freight to passenger (and vice versa) be a possible answer? So freight config to Scotland, mostly passenger back. Would need clever design to swap seats in/out etc, but the likes of Elon musk's design teams might produce something?

Only if the passenger loads are as unbalanced as the freight ones, but in the opposite direction.

 

[Sm5]

Deleted

 

[A0wen]

Surely this must be a problem for road haulage too ? .. yet they make it pay.

Lower overheads and smaller loads i.e. even a 40' will have less capacity than a freight spec 319.

Most large fleets will optimise their fleet use to ensure minimal shipping of fresh air.

 

[Sm5]

Deleted

 

[Bald Rick]

Surely this must be a problem for road haulage too ? .. yet they make it pay.

As well as being lower cost, road is somewhat more flexible, in that lorries can vary their route on the ‘empty’ return to pick up a part load / part trip. Rather more difficult to do that fir the train.

Random thought but how does Whisky exit the highlands these days ?

mostly in containers. I’m not saying on which trains!

 

[Sm5]

Deleted

 

[Irascible]

That's a ridiculous suggestion driven by ideology over pragmatism. There is no first or second world country in the world which has done that.

And what about companies like Lafarge who run their own fleet to ship aggregates? Or the supermarkets who run their own fleets? Are you saying they would be compelled to use the "national" freight carrier thereby losing control of their supply chain?

I've suggested it before, but perhaps a "centrally organised" motorway "conveyer" system might work for trailers if we ever get more automated tractor units - it's a lot easier to automate driving on a motorway than pretty much anywhere else. You deliver your trailer at some dispatch yard & arrange for collection at the other end, so you can keep your private & less economical fleets & the long haul is something more efficient but less flexible.

The "transshipment" would be literally swapping tractors, which would I suspect thrash any attempt at long-haul via rail for our journey distances ( plus no waiting for the train to leave ). No need for driver breaks either.

This is near-future speculation though, not going to be fixing our shortages any time soon.

 

[Annetts key]

I've suggested it before, but perhaps a "centrally organised" motorway "conveyer" system might work for trailers if we ever get more automated tractor units - it's a lot easier to automate driving on a motorway than pretty much anywhere else. You deliver your trailer at some dispatch yard & arrange for collection at the other end, so you can keep your private & less economical fleets & the long haul is something more efficient but less flexible.

The "transshipment" would be literally swapping tractors, which would I suspect thrash any attempt at long-haul via rail for our journey distances ( plus no waiting for the train to leave ). No need for driver breaks either.

This is near-future speculation though, not going to be fixing our shortages any time soon.

I think we are at least ten years away from large driverless automated road vehicles, even on motorways. Although there are now small battery electric delivery robotic vehicles operating in some places around the word, including in Milton Keynes, these travel at pedestrian speed. Here is a search link to a number of videos.

Similar concepts and technology to what you describe could be used for other transport systems though. Including rail. Arrive at the "transshipment" location. Detach your purpose designed trailer or wait for the fully automated robotic system to unload your module (most likely very similar to existing standard containers). Electronically confirm the details via your internet connected pad. Leave. Then the fully automated robotic system can assemble a multimode train. Once ready, said train will receive a final safety check from the depot staff. Then the driverless ERTMS fitted automated train will depart.

It will then travel to the next required "transshipment" location where items will either be loaded or unloaded or both. Again, the changes will be by a fully automated robotic system. After a final safety check from the depot staff, the train will continue it's journey.

The train will be in continuous contact via radio communications so that the control centre both knows it's location and so a human can amend or adjust anything if needed.

How competitive this could be compared to road transport I don't know. And obviously a substantial upfront investment would be needed for both the train and the "transshipment" locations. Also, it would only be economic to use existing railway lines, which limits the areas where this service could be offered. But if running costs are lower than running a conventional road distribution system, it may happen at some point in the future.

 

[21C101]

I wonder if those wanting a return to pre 1960s levels of rail freight will be so keen when, for example, Thameslink Midland Main Line is reduced to a single hourly offpeak service to Bedford and a single hourly offpeak stopper to St Albans to make space for a procession of freight trains from the north to Cricklewood, where the depot would need to be closed and turned back into a marshalling yard?

 

[zwk500]

I wonder if those wanting a return to pre 1960s levels of rail freight will be so keen when, for example, Thameslink Midland Main Line is reduced to a single hourly offpeak service to Bedford and a single hourly offpeak stopper to St Albans to make space for a procession of freight trains from the north to Cricklewood, where the depot would need to be closed and turned back into a marshalling yard?

Why would they go to Cricklewood? Wembley has unused sidings that could be brought back into use and the MML isn't cleared for W10/12 traffic. Just because we go to old levels of traffic tonnage doesn't mean we'll go back to the old inefficient ways of running that traffic.

 

[A0wen]

I've suggested it before, but perhaps a "centrally organised" motorway "conveyer" system might work for trailers if we ever get more automated tractor units - it's a lot easier to automate driving on a motorway than pretty much anywhere else. You deliver your trailer at some dispatch yard & arrange for collection at the other end, so you can keep your private & less economical fleets & the long haul is something more efficient but less flexible.

The "transshipment" would be literally swapping tractors, which would I suspect thrash any attempt at long-haul via rail for our journey distances ( plus no waiting for the train to leave ). No need for driver breaks either.

This is near-future speculation though, not going to be fixing our shortages any time soon.

Doesn't really offer much improvement on what happens today.

The likes of Stobart or Wincanton have far more trailers than tractor units. What they'll tend to do is drop a trailer at its destination and pick up one for return either from the customer they've just delivered to (who may be moving pallets or roll cages around as well as full loads) or a different customer.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Why would they go to Cricklewood? Wembley has unused sidings that could be brought back into use and the MML isn't cleared for W10/12 traffic. Just because we go to old levels of traffic tonnage doesn't mean we'll go back to the old inefficient ways of running that traffic.

Quite - marshalling yards "delayed" traffic , not loaded and unloaded it. In any case , the MML was (then) all about gas , industrial and house coal - a market which has utterly disappeared.

For non bulk freight , think of the likes of Daventry and so on , on already cleared W10/W12 routes.

 

[21C101]

Why would they go to Cricklewood? Wembley has unused sidings that could be brought back into use and the MML isn't cleared for W10/12 traffic. Just because we go to old levels of traffic tonnage doesn't mean we'll go back to the old inefficient ways of running that traffic.

You still need paths for it all however you process it in London. That means less paths for passenger trains.