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

[furnessvale]

But you can make a dent without major infrastructure investment, simply by working with the likes of Amazon and others to come up with solutions that will get a lot of vehicles off the road or at least reduce the mileage.

Amazon has a huge hub in Milton Keynes and all the vans start there to pick up goods for 'local delivery' and then return later. I'm a good 50 odd miles away and probably not close to the total distance they cover.

With suggestions of adapting EMUs for freight, they could be ideal to replace loads of vans to a more local mini hub for the vans to pick up from. They would use a standard path and I'm sure found be given some off peak paths without much, if any, timetabling changes.

Obviously there needs to be a place to unload but that isn't going to be insurmountable and I'm sure in the current climate the likes of Amazon could be asked to pay or at least contribute.

Sadly, the constant reference to the likes of Amazon, which initially is a VERY hard nut for rail to crack, and direct delivery to supermarkets (by some), which is impossible, diverts attention from the possible.

I can point at several million tonnes of aggregates currently moving by road that could easily move by rail if road haulage was properly charged for its road use. Other examples are available.

 

[jon0844]

Sadly, the constant reference to the likes of Amazon, which initially is a VERY hard nut for rail to crack, and direct delivery to supermarkets (by some), which is impossible, diverts attention from the possible.

I can point at several million tonnes of aggregates currently moving by road that could easily move by rail if road haulage was properly charged for its road use. Other examples are available.

That needs to be done too, obviously, but there are many pretty easy ways to get things moving that don't require huge capital spending in future project cycles.

We're now moving an incredible amount of packages around, using multiple carriers, and if you can reduce drivers for some things you then have them available for others.

 

[The Ham]

But if the container is full i.e. at its weight limit then you *cannot* add more to it - it's that simple. No ifs no buts. So you're trying to solve a problem which cannot be legally solved.

If the weight limit is the issue then what in suggesting could help as rather than having to have one customer in one ISO container you could (as long as loading/unloading was automated) mix and match within containers so that they each were closer to capacity and weight limits.

If one customer can justify a near full load all the way through, then obviously will change. Again I'm not suggesting that it would be standard, in fact that's the beauty of it. As it could be used where it's useful and ignored where it's not, as it wouldn't need a different container than is currently used.

I would imagine that it's possible that similar objections were made about the use of ISO containers, in that the ships would have been to their load limits, however by being able to improve the loading/unloading of the ships the use of ISO containers became the norm.

In the same way, if it became easy to sub divide containers and load/unload with ease then the way stuff gets moved about would change.

As I've said it could well be that something different happens, however it's likely that the way things are done will change as it will mean that less staff are needed. With many Western countries facing a shortage of staff going forwards the continuation of what happens is unlikely, if for no other reason that the cost of staff is likely to increase making the use of automation more beneficial.

By having small load limits for the part boxes it could be that a part box could be loaded, shipped to a hub where it then gets added to other part boxes to then make a long distance leg before then bring split to go it's separate ways from another local hub to its end point.

If that second local hub was then supplying a plant with parts from several suppliers, it could be that those several part boxes were added together to create a full load to that end point.

Yes it would be different to how things are currently doing, however it could still be cheaper than more wasteful use of people (several long distance part lorry trips, or having to order in bulk and store it).

 

[Irascible]

A three-month trial of transporting live lobsters and other shellfish from Cornwall to restaurants in London in the guard's vans of HSTs was launched in December 2015. The shellfish were packed into insulated crates and loaded onto a late afternoon departure from Penzance, arriving at Paddington before midnight for collection and distribution to customers. This was a sustainable solution for restaurants wishing to serve the best Cornish produce, according to GWR MD Mark Hopwood.

InterCity RailFreight had begun by carrying time-critical medical samples from Nottingham to laboratories in London using East Midlands Trains. It expanded to deliver other time and temperature sensitive consignments for demanding customers, including financial and legal documents and engineering components.

We always did things like this in the past before the railway became so fragmented. The trains are running anyway so why not use the space in HST power cars in this way?

What went wrong? The HSTs were replaced by Hitachi IETs which were designed by accountants and have no guard's van, and hence no space for anything other than passengers (not even their surfboards). I assume the lobsters now go by road. I believe there was also a maker of specialised cakes in Cornwall who used to send her wares to London by rail (presumably kept well away from the lobsters). Were the IETs ordered before the lobster traffic started? Using the Sleeper might be an option but arrival in Paddington probably too late.

If it's light/low volume and worth it you can just take a few seats out ( that would also solve the "surfboard problem" ) & if necessary provide some sort of basic security mesh to stop casual half-inching, or a secure locker for documents ( is there anything stopping those going in a cab? ). Has any of this traffic been bulky enough that you couldn't get it in a passenger door? if it is then it'd probably need some effort to unload, which is not ideal for passenger services anyway...

Sadly, the constant reference to the likes of Amazon, which initially is a VERY hard nut for rail to crack, and direct delivery to supermarkets (by some), which is impossible, diverts attention from the possible.

I can point at several million tonnes of aggregates currently moving by road that could easily move by rail if road haulage was properly charged for its road use. Other examples are available.

This seems a far easier first target than JIT logistics networks - is it really only price that's keeping this traffic on the road?

 

[furnessvale]

This seems a far easier first target than JIT logistics networks - is it really only price that's keeping this traffic on the road?

Aggregates are EXTREMELY price sensitive.

 

[squizzler]

I was listening to BBC “Question Time”, their flagship political panel show, today.

One of the panelists responded to a question on the supply chain situation that freight should be moved to rail, to much audience applause.

Clearly, whilst we here are continually told that more freight by rail is impossible, amongst the public who are not blessed with wisdom from our forum logistics experts, the idea is gaining traction (excuse the pun).

 

[zwk500]

Clearly, whilst we here are continually told that more freight by rail is impossible, amongst the public who are not blessed with wisdom from our forum logistics experts, the idea is gaining traction (excuse the pun).

Clearly, the public have no proper conception of the cost of moving freight by rail. If you asked the average person on the street 'should more freight be moved by rail' you'd get a very different answer than if you asked 'do you think a delivery charge of [substantial amount] is reasonable with the current shortage of HGV drivers?'

 

[squizzler]

This would be the same British public that have already, quite knowingly, voted for more expensive goods by choosing to leave the European Union, plus a whole host of other problems?

At least a switch of freight to rail would result in some tangible quality of life benefits, such as better air quality, less highway congestion. Not to mention the warm fuzzy things like thinking that you are helping the polar bears.

 

[jon0844]

Given HS2 would help a lot with increasing freight movements, I guess those who say yes (probably because they just want more road space for themselves) would very quickly change their mind because HS2 is in their mind a waste of money.

 

[furnessvale]

Clearly, the public have no proper conception of the cost of moving freight by rail. If you asked the average person on the street 'should more freight be moved by rail' you'd get a very different answer than if you asked 'do you think a delivery charge of [substantial amount] is reasonable with the current shortage of HGV drivers?'

A pay rise of 10% for HGV drivers would,on average, increase the retail price of goods in the shops by 0.3%. There is much hype about the potential effect of driver pay rises. There is a lot more to the cost of running an HGV than the drivers wages.

 

[PeterC]

Clearly, the public have no proper conception of the cost of moving freight by rail. If you asked the average person on the street 'should more freight be moved by rail' you'd get a very different answer than if you asked 'do you think a delivery charge of [substantial amount] is reasonable with the current shortage of HGV drivers?'

I think you are missing the distinction between "should" and "could". Certainly more "should" go by rail but as the old saying goes "if I was going there I wouldn't start from here .

 

[A0wen]

This would be the same British public that have already, quite knowingly, voted for more expensive goods by choosing to leave the European Union, plus a whole host of other problems?

At least a switch of freight to rail would result in some tangible quality of life benefits, such as better air quality, less highway congestion. Not to mention the warm fuzzy things like thinking that you are helping the polar bears.

Yes, but when you then ask those members of the public who want more freight to go by rail whether they support HS2, the answer tends to be 'No'. Yet without HS2, there won't be the capacity on key parts of the network to run more freight.

It's very easy to cheer a trite statement when you don't understand the consequences or ramifications of what you are cheering for.....

 

[chorleyjeff]

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!

Where is the railfreight capacity ? Where will the wagons be loaded ? Is there anywhere between Wigan and Carlisle where wagonload freight can be received or distributed from a rail connection. I remember in the last century a neighbour had a lucrative contract to use his artic lorry to carry goods from the railway depot at Blackburn to Preston because there were no unloading facilities at Preston !
As typing I remembered that a rail facility to transfer loads from rail to road was connected near Bamber Bridge ( condition of road hauliers planning consent for a depot to be built ) but has it ever been used and could it be used for businesses to hand over loads to the railway ?

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


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.


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".

Have they gone home from the USA and Australia as well as Germany and France ? Pinging, fewer HGV tests and low wages might be part of the explanation here as well.

 

[The Ham]

Have they gone home from the USA and Australia as well as Germany and France ? Pinging, fewer HGV tests and low wages might be part of the explanation here as well

I understand your point, however not sure where in the post you were replying to it said about people going home (post below).

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


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.


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".

The best explanation on this I've heard was that by leaving the EU it has impacted on how easy our robustness in our response to there being a wider issue with a lack of HGV drivers.

The other factor is that with complications with movement of goods it is going to discourage haulage companies from the EU from sending lorries here as it's harder for them to be sure that they will have a load to come back with.

As such, whilst leaving the EU clearly hasn't caused the issue it's made the issue more obvious than it otherwise could have been.

Probably one of the bigger impacts is the rise in couriers which will be more attractive for some than long distance driving (for instance you can go home to your own bed at night).

Now whilst an increase in drivers pay is going to have some limited in the cost of things out is likely that it will also increase the tax take by HMRC, as a driver being paid (say) £40,000 rather than £36,000 would pay £9,160 in taxes (including employee NI) rather than £7,880.

However, as I've pointed out before, we have an aging population. That means a falling number of people working, which will mean that making being a lorry driver more attractive will impact on other roles. They in turn will need to change to ensure that they have staff or have implications. In reality many more jobs will need to be automated to match the falling numbers of workers.

In part we are seeing a falling population due to fewer children being born. Some of this is obvious (such as it's less easy for same sex couples to have children than hetero sexual couples, in its simplist form a hetero sexual couple can have an unexpected child, that's not something which is overly likely with a same sex couples) some of our less so (more people needing assistance to get pregnant), however as those without children age they have less need to work full time and so that's likely to impact on the working population as well (simply, once your mortgage costs fall due to inflation reducing the impact of them, as well as being "smaller" due to pay rise and there's no need to have to have a given number of bedrooms to accommodate your children, then some may opt to work less to have more leisure time).

As an example if you can afford to work 4 days a week, then you can have a long weekend every weekend. Now whilst that will reduce your total pay by 20% it's not going to reduce your take home pay by that much, especially if it brings you back below the higher tax rate threshold. Which is likely to have been highlighted to those who were furloughed and managed to pay their bills.

Again that's going to increase the need for more staff across a wider range of industries. I don't know about others, but my LinkedIn page keeps getting (almost on a daily basis) messages from companies after staff and my current employer is looking for more staff and failing to find enough.

As such driver shortages are just the canary in the coal mine, the first thing that many have noticed but likely far from the last thing that will happen.

It used to be location, location, location or even education, education, education, now it's likely to be automation, automation, automation.

Those industries which fail to reduce the numbers of staff that they need will find that others will improve their pay and conditions to get the staff that they need and will then need to follow suit.

Conversely if they do, then they'll find that they'll be ahead of the curve and be able to weather the stein storm more easily then others in their industry.

 

[Jozhua]

I was listening to a podcast that mentioned an article about the mistreatment EU workers received in the UK, perticularly during the pandemic. One truck driver was yelled at by police for leaving their cab for a walk during lockdown.

Clearly, the public have no proper conception of the cost of moving freight by rail. If you asked the average person on the street 'should more freight be moved by rail' you'd get a very different answer than if you asked 'do you think a delivery charge of [substantial amount] is reasonable with the current shortage of HGV drivers?'

Do you really think it is that insane? Despite being the cheapest way of moving goods over land in a large proportion of the world?

The only reason it is expensive is because we don't do very much of it and therefore do not have proper economies of scale. Freight trains must fight for limited capacity to fit amongst passenger services, something that will be less of an issue post HS2.

A pay rise of 10% for HGV drivers would,on average, increase the retail price of goods in the shops by 0.3%. There is much hype about the potential effect of driver pay rises. There is a lot more to the cost of running an HGV than the drivers wages.

This is very true. Of course the supermarkets would pass this on as a 10% price rise, as they clearly were unprofitable before.

Yes, but when you then ask those members of the public who want more freight to go by rail whether they support HS2, the answer tends to be 'No'. Yet without HS2, there won't be the capacity on key parts of the network to run more freight.

It's very easy to cheer a trite statement when you don't understand the consequences or ramifications of what you are cheering for.....

Well HS2 is for getting rich people into London faster clearly. I will refuse to listen to any other information on the subject.

I understand your point, however not sure where in the post you were replying to it said about people going home (post below).

The best explanation on this I've heard was that by leaving the EU it has impacted on how easy our robustness in our response to there being a wider issue with a lack of HGV drivers.

The other factor is that with complications with movement of goods it is going to discourage haulage companies from the EU from sending lorries here as it's harder for them to be sure that they will have a load to come back with.

As such, whilst leaving the EU clearly hasn't caused the issue it's made the issue more obvious than it otherwise could have been.

Probably one of the bigger impacts is the rise in couriers which will be more attractive for some than long distance driving (for instance you can go home to your own bed at night).

Now whilst an increase in drivers pay is going to have some limited in the cost of things out is likely that it will also increase the tax take by HMRC, as a driver being paid (say) £40,000 rather than £36,000 would pay £9,160 in taxes (including employee NI) rather than £7,880.

However, as I've pointed out before, we have an aging population. That means a falling number of people working, which will mean that making being a lorry driver more attractive will impact on other roles. They in turn will need to change to ensure that they have staff or have implications. In reality many more jobs will need to be automated to match the falling numbers of workers.

In part we are seeing a falling population due to fewer children being born. Some of this is obvious (such as it's less easy for same sex couples to have children than hetero sexual couples, in its simplist form a hetero sexual couple can have an unexpected child, that's not something which is overly likely with a same sex couples) some of our less so (more people needing assistance to get pregnant), however as those without children age they have less need to work full time and so that's likely to impact on the working population as well (simply, once your mortgage costs fall due to inflation reducing the impact of them, as well as being "smaller" due to pay rise and there's no need to have to have a given number of bedrooms to accommodate your children, then some may opt to work less to have more leisure time).

As an example if you can afford to work 4 days a week, then you can have a long weekend every weekend. Now whilst that will reduce your total pay by 20% it's not going to reduce your take home pay by that much, especially if it brings you back below the higher tax rate threshold. Which is likely to have been highlighted to those who were furloughed and managed to pay their bills.

Again that's going to increase the need for more staff across a wider range of industries. I don't know about others, but my LinkedIn page keeps getting (almost on a daily basis) messages from companies after staff and my current employer is looking for more staff and failing to find enough.

As such driver shortages are just the canary in the coal mine, the first thing that many have noticed but likely far from the last thing that will happen.

It used to be location, location, location or even education, education, education, now it's likely to be automation, automation, automation.

Those industries which fail to reduce the numbers of staff that they need will find that others will improve their pay and conditions to get the staff that they need and will then need to follow suit.

Conversely if they do, then they'll find that they'll be ahead of the curve and be able to weather the stein storm more easily then others in their industry.

This is something we are seeing in a lot of developed economies and I think the canary in the coal mine is 100% correct.

I think the issues are incredibly complex and really feed in to a lot of long running cultural issues and actually an unwillingness to critically evaluate the systems we interact with on a daily basis.

Let's look at "automation" and the supposed explosion in productivity after the tech boom. What many employers found after introducing computers in to clerical work, is that their workforce grew, not shrank, as a result of computerisation. Forms that were previously fairly short would now be pages long, the work expanded to outweigh any efficiency gains computerisation brought. I think a number of jobs could quite easily be automated away or simply removed, but aren't, as companies can sell the perception of necessary labour they must do to achieve a certain task. Almost in the same way people joke about unions requiring two people to assist one worker changing a lightbulb and the like.

Another example would be self driving cars, which the Toyota demo at the Tokyo Olympics demonstrated are still a long way off. Not only did they hit a Paralympian on accident, but they still required operators in each pod to oversee them. So much for the efficiency gains of the self driving revolution.

I don't think automation will help us out of this one. It's going to take a big shift in how we perceive ourselves, our economy and the way we choose to invest in our future. Covid and Brexit are the straws that broke the camel's back in terms of this country. Fairly heavy straws I admit, but there has been a general erosion of our capacity to deliver on basic things, especially in times of emergency.

 

[zwk500]

Do you really think it is that insane? Despite being the cheapest way of moving goods over land in a large proportion of the world?

The only reason it is expensive is because we don't do very much of it and therefore do not have proper economies of scale.

the reason it is expensive is because you must tranship nearly all goods twice. This is the expensive part, because you need land, people and equipment to move the goods from lorry to train then back to lorry. The UK isn't large, and therefore the penalty is proportionately bigger here than it would be on the continent or in the US.

Freight trains must fight for limited capacity to fit amongst passenger services, something that will be less of an issue post HS2.

Hs2 will help to a limited extent but e.g. Felixstowe to Wcml trains will still have to fight for paths over thr North London Line (or through Leicester). TfL trains have seen the strongest return in demand, the Overground isn't giving up its paths any time soon.

I don't think automation will help us out of this one. It's going to take a big shift in how we perceive ourselves, our economy and the way we choose to invest in our future.

small point - computerisation is not the same as automation. Most companies are still manually inputting data to spreadsheets, manually typing up reports etc.
Complete automation rather than remote supervision is already present in controlled environments like warehouses, and the AI systems are advancing rapidly. It'll also be safer as more automation is brought in, reducing the amount of unexpected/illogical human behaviour encountered.

 

[Irascible]

the reason it is expensive is because you must tranship nearly all goods twice. This is the expensive part, because you need land, people and equipment to move the goods from lorry to train then back to lorry. The UK isn't large, and therefore the penalty is proportionately bigger here than it would be on the continent or in the US.

Not to mention how many private terminal facilities there are in the US. How many have we got left here?

 

[A0wen]

A0wen said:
Yes, but when you then ask those members of the public who want more freight to go by rail whether they support HS2, the answer tends to be 'No'. Yet without HS2, there won't be the capacity on key parts of the network to run more freight.

It's very easy to cheer a trite statement when you don't understand the consequences or ramifications of what you are cheering for.....

Well HS2 is for getting rich people into London faster clearly. I will refuse to listen to any other information on the subject.

Thank you for demonstrating my point so succinctly.

Let's look at "automation" and the supposed explosion in productivity after the tech boom. What many employers found after introducing computers in to clerical work, is that their workforce grew, not shrank, as a result of computerisation. Forms that were previously fairly short would now be pages long, the work expanded to outweigh any efficiency gains computerisation brought. I think a number of jobs could quite easily be automated away or simply removed, but aren't, as companies can sell the perception of necessary labour they must do to achieve a certain task. Almost in the same way people joke about unions requiring two people to assist one worker changing a lightbulb and the like.

Once again, you're showing a complete lack of understanding of what actually happened.

Computerisation allowed huge sets of data to be processed, handled and analysed - far in excess of anything which could be done manually. If there was any expansion of the workforce as a result of this - and I have to say as somebody who has worked in an office based environment for the last 25 years, I don't believe that's been the case - then the "efficiency gain" was the handling, processing and use of the data which allowed many companies to grow. If your theory was correct then companies would actually be seeing reducing profits as the cost of employing additional people would have been more than the additional benefits the company achieved by employing them.

the reason it is expensive is because you must tranship nearly all goods twice. This is the expensive part, because you need land, people and equipment to move the goods from lorry to train then back to lorry. The UK isn't large, and therefore the penalty is proportionately bigger here than it would be on the continent or in the US.

The key to this is geography - in a relatively small country shipping goods domestically you want to minimise the number of stops or handling points in the journey.

Comparing the UK with Canada or the USA is pretty pointless, the geography and indeed logistics operations in those countries are quite different.

A better comparison might be with Japan - an island, larger than the UK in geographic terms with a high population density - I've not been able to pin down any comparable statistics, but I'd be interested to see how the UK and Japan compare.

 

[Bald Rick]

Despite being the cheapest way of moving goods over land in a large proportion of the world?

evidence for that statement?

 

[Dr Hoo]

Not to mention how many private terminal facilities there are in the US. How many have we got left here?

Not sure what point you are trying to make here. The overwhelming majority of freight terminals in GB are ‘private’.

I think that we can agree that there is patchy coverage of terminals in various areas.

 

[Irascible]

Not sure what point you are trying to make here. The overwhelming majority of freight terminals in GB are ‘private’.

Yes, badly worded, sorry - I meant terminals for the sole use of an individual company/facility/whatever you want to call it. I was trying not to call it "siding" even though a lot of them seem to be a simple siding. It was also a roundabout way of pointing out that for many cases there won't be any transshipment to a different form of transport.

Was also commentary rather than insinuation that US operations are inherently better than ours or vice versa. We don't do wagonload, the US does, not really sure we can compare systems. Germany and Switzerland do wagonload too still, how do they make it work?

 

[furnessvale]

Yes, badly worded, sorry - I meant terminals for the sole use of an individual company/facility/whatever you want to call it. I was trying not to call it "siding" even though a lot of them seem to be a simple siding. It was also a roundabout way of pointing out that for many cases there won't be any transshipment to a different form of transport.

Was also commentary rather than insinuation that US operations are inherently better than ours or vice versa. We don't do wagonload, the US does, not really sure we can compare systems. Germany and Switzerland do wagonload too still, how do they make it work?

Probably involving huge amounts of subsidy, just as they do with "rolling road" services.

 

[tbtc]

Do you really think it is that insane? Despite being the cheapest way of moving goods over land in a large proportion of the world?

The only reason it is expensive is because we don't do very much of it and therefore do not have proper economies of scale

It's cheaper in other parts of the world because of the distances

On some UK markets, rail does well, e.g. when it could transport coal from the pit to the power station

On other markets, rail struggles because there's a need to either put the "goods" on a truck to get to a rail distribution centre or put the "goods" onto a truck to get them from the nearest rail distribution centre to the final destination - and on those markets the cost of "going all the way in a truck" versus "going part way on a truck, then onto a train, then onto another truck" isn't as competitive as "going all the way on a truck"

On other UK markets, rail struggles because, whilst there are lots of lorries all going the same way along a stretch of motorway, they all have very different stating and end points

In countries where the landmass is a lot larger, you can still make rail competitive because the "middle" section of the journey is so long to make trucks inefficient over that distance - you can travel over three thousand miles in the United States without seeing Canada/ Mexico, so a long freight train can be efficient. Whereas in the UK, there's not much of the mainland population more than five hundred miles from Southampton/ Felixstowe Docks (you're probably only talking about people living beyond about Dundee), so there aren't as many markets where rail can compete as well as an MGR taking dozens of coal trucks from the colliery to the cooling towers

In somewhere like the United States, there are thousands of miles for a "coast to coast" journey, so you might be able to round up several different types of "goods" and put them behind one locomotive in a way that would be inefficient for a journey like just London to Manchester

Sadly, markets like coal are pretty much for the history books - which means rail struggles to compete with what markets are left.

I'm sure we'd all like more freight and for freight to succeed, but there are reasons why it will never work as well in the UK as it can across entire continents - there seems a lot of wishful thinking on here regardless

HS2 is for getting rich people into London faster clearly. I will refuse to listen to any other information on the subject

I think the issues are incredibly complex and really feed in to a lot of long running cultural issues and actually an unwillingness to critically evaluate the systems we interact with on a daily basis

If I were criticising other people for their failure to critically evaluate things and learn how nuanced and complicated soituations actually are, I wouldn't also be throwing around trite statements like "HS2 is just for rich people" and go on to boast about how I refuse to listen to any information that contradicts my firmly held prejudice

 

[Jozhua]

If I were criticising other people for their failure to critically evaluate things and learn how nuanced and complicated soituations actually are, I wouldn't also be throwing around trite statements like "HS2 is just for rich people" and go on to boast about how I refuse to listen to any information that contradicts my firmly held prejudice

I was being Sarcastic

 

[stuetor]

Is it me or is there a glaring omission from any news as to why rail freight is not" taking the strain" Does anyone have any authoritative commentary on why rail freight is not the preferred option for long distance delivery ?
Is there any increased demand for rail freight at all ? Could anyone even just explain a simple case of eg Kent to Scotland Why HGV is need for this distance and not rail ? How do other countries compare ?

ciao Ms O

 

[alf]

£60,000 a year 35 hour week, limited route & traction knowledge for train drivers.

£25,000 a year 50 hour week universal route knowledge for HGV drivers who also sheet their loads, fuel & clean their vehicles, do basic maintenance & change their hours at the drop of a hat.

 

[thejuggler]

How do goods get to and from the rail freight terminals?

 

[Geeves]

I'm not sure this needs to turn into a lorry driver vs train driver thread, as the juggler says, if there are no drivers what happens when the train load needs to be swapped onto a lorry? It seems even if they paid the lorry drivers 100 grand the conditions for them are abysmal. You would need live in a lorry cab and have to carry a bottle round for the inevitable to earn 100 grand.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

£60,000 a year 35 hour week, limited route & traction knowledge for train drivers.

£25,000 a year 50 hour week universal route knowledge for HGV drivers who also sheet their loads, fuel & clean their vehicles, do basic maintenance & change their hours at the drop of a hat.

Don’t forget frequent shifts as a night watchman from the comfort of the cab of a lorry parked in a lay by on one of Britain’s many scenic A-roads!

 

[Oxfordblues]

There must be many former rail freight customers now rueing the day they decided to put their distribution entirely in the hands of trunk road hauliers. I'm thinking of Kellogg's at Trafford Park and Pedigree of Melton Mowbray, for example, who each used to despatch two trainloads a day of breakfast cereals and petfoods respectively. They're probably now scratching around desperately for HGV drivers as their warehouses fill up with undespatched products and their orders are going unfulfilled.