The Puddock
Member
One of their services had a SPAD at Mossend on Monday so perhaps they’re a driver short at the moment?
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Varamis Rail Given Operators Licence from ORR
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Oh ok, thanks for the information.
Suraggu
Member
Or are thier STP paths have been rejected and calling up and running on a WTT path?
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So Veramis are now consistently running on week days and on time service at about 4 1/2 hours each way (it only loses time entering Mossend Yard). The dwell time at Birmingham is about 1hr 20m.
Is it still carrying fresh air or is the dwell time at BHI now there are it's actually being unloaded and loaded. Anybody know?
Is it still carrying fresh air or is the dwell time at BHI now there are it's actually being unloaded and loaded. Anybody know?
Suraggu
Member
Apparently they have customers from recent photos, but it doesn't really show high loadings.
Fleetmaster
Member
There is plenty of modern era (i.e next day delivery) parcels traffic that meets the ideal railway requirement of big loads and big unloads. Warehouse/dock big. Those huge double decker DHL/DPD artics you see on the roads, even local roads...they are usually (always?) carrying large consignments of identical parcels, ten or twenty pallets at a time.
There are SME customers producing those volumes day in day out in industrial units all over this green and pleasant land. Every tin pot town has at least one of these estates, usuallly multiple. Such is the decrepit state of Royal Mail, the likes of DHL/DPD can now happily trundle these trucks around all day on local roads, calling at their customers daily simply on the off chance there is a load. Postman Pat on steroids.
The technology and real estate already exists to allow these monster trucks to unload their daily bread in a rail connected facility for onward transport to a rail connected distribution centre. With automated pallet movers this doesn't need a human in the chain at all, at either end. The pallets and indeed parcels are already labelled and scanned before they even get into the truck.
It is bulk traffic, in the dead of night, where the ability to travel long distances quickly will easily cancel out the small delay in having an extra (automated) step in the handling chain. The fuel and wage savings does the rest. Customers already happily ensure their pallets are loaded to uniform dimensions and in a secure way, and expect to be held liable for losses if they aren't, which is all perfect for railway transit and automated loading/unloading.
The customer doesn't have to change their processes at all. It wouldn't even be costly to trial as a proof of concept and of course prove this method was cheaper/quicker than 100% road. Just two railheads.
The sad reality is that it is the railways just don't want this traffic. The culture just isn't there. Time is running out for this to even be a viable market. As soon as trucks are automated and electric, the railway can kiss this potential goldmine goodbye forever.
There are SME customers producing those volumes day in day out in industrial units all over this green and pleasant land. Every tin pot town has at least one of these estates, usuallly multiple. Such is the decrepit state of Royal Mail, the likes of DHL/DPD can now happily trundle these trucks around all day on local roads, calling at their customers daily simply on the off chance there is a load. Postman Pat on steroids.
The technology and real estate already exists to allow these monster trucks to unload their daily bread in a rail connected facility for onward transport to a rail connected distribution centre. With automated pallet movers this doesn't need a human in the chain at all, at either end. The pallets and indeed parcels are already labelled and scanned before they even get into the truck.
It is bulk traffic, in the dead of night, where the ability to travel long distances quickly will easily cancel out the small delay in having an extra (automated) step in the handling chain. The fuel and wage savings does the rest. Customers already happily ensure their pallets are loaded to uniform dimensions and in a secure way, and expect to be held liable for losses if they aren't, which is all perfect for railway transit and automated loading/unloading.
The customer doesn't have to change their processes at all. It wouldn't even be costly to trial as a proof of concept and of course prove this method was cheaper/quicker than 100% road. Just two railheads.
The sad reality is that it is the railways just don't want this traffic. The culture just isn't there. Time is running out for this to even be a viable market. As soon as trucks are automated and electric, the railway can kiss this potential goldmine goodbye forever.
Trainguy34
Member
Unless there's a very considerable price or time difference.
Royal Mail has been using double decker artic trailers for approx 20years. There is nothing unique to DHL/DPD.
Fleetmaster
Member
I'm pretty sure that's for trunk work, not direct customer collection.
They are often carrying the parcels loose. Not often palletised.
No, the reality is that the distribution network of the big distributors for ‘next day‘ is designed around overnight trunk flows of 1 or 2 artics at very specific times, geenrally from the Golden Triangle where most of the country is sub 4hrs away. And the distribution centres are designed around lorry movements. To swap to rail means a fundamental change to the logistics network.
Where rail can work is on the longer distance flows, and in a very few circumstances city centre penetration if there are city centre distribution hubs.
Fleetmaster
Member
Not in my experience. The market is so huge now, the likes of DHL/DPD will happily (and quite logically) send a customer a van or rigid truck for loose parcels, and a double decker for pallet loads, whether that is one or twenty.
Not really fundamental. I think people might be surprised to realise that in pallet terms alone, just from this daily collection traffic, how much volume is going from, say, the Kent/Sussex area to Scotland. It really is train load volumes. It stands to reason, just think of how many industrial estates there are in just those two counties, and they are quite rural too. The tiniest little business can create a truck full of parcels in one day, and two or three of those pallets will be parcels solely for Scottish addresses, all for next day delivery. Day after day. One business. This is the reality of UK commerce now.
It is enough to justify changing either the basic model of what moves where during the night, or keep the existing one and just shift the final sort (breaking down pallets and sorting by postcode) closer the destinations. It is all still largely road based, with artics docking at warehouses. They just have a rail siding too. It can all be done in the same time scales, but with less fuel and wage costs.
The window is closing though.
It is fundamental. At a typical DC you will have upwards of 30 docking bays for arctics, which will serve multiple destinations. Pretty difficult to get more than one train alongside a DC…
jagardner1984
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I am surprised, even for a bit of greenwashing, that Rail hasn’t sought some of the Amazon market. The idea they’re being slightly different - with picking in regional warehouses - transport by lorry in large sacks of dozens of small parcels. These are then directly loaded at local delivery offices onto courier vans for local delivery. So for example there are multiple flows from Amazon in Dunfermline (about two miles from the railway) into both Glasgow and Edinburgh. There are dozens of branded vans delivering from these sacks daily. They are easily loaded and shifted on roll cages, or indeed loose. A van will take 4-8 of these depending on the route. It seems fairly low hanging fruit to send a 3 or 4 car train into either somewhere close to Glasgow, Edinburgh or both, to be offloaded onto vans for last mile delivery. This would give them the “X HGV journeys off the road” headline which to be Frank is the main concern for such companies. I appreciate Customer - Hub - Rail - Hub - Customer is always going to be a hard sell to get the required volumes But if the first and last steps can be removed, so it is displacing, literally in the same container, one form of transport for another, this seems potentially more attainable ?
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To reinforce this, you only need drive along the M6/M74 into the night one day. The quantities of HGVs, for multiple retailers / couriers, whether they be to/from the golden triangle or elsewhere; are really quite staggering.
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To reinforce this, you only need drive along the M6/M74 into the night one day. The quantities of HGVs, for multiple retailers / couriers, whether they be to/from the golden triangle or elsewhere; are really quite staggering.
Why do you think it hasn’t?
I posted elsewhere on these pages a couple of years ago about the challenges of Rail meeting the Amazon logistics model. (Bear in mind that the worldwide amazon logistics model is based on what Amazon U.K. set up over a decade ago).
jagardner1984
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To be Frank - my experiences (not with Amazon, but another home delivery service during Covid) were of “you get that to the customer, come what May, no excuses”. Whether we like them or not, they have a relentless focus on getting products to people quickly and efficiently. My experiences with railways seem that the customer (freight or passenger) can be something of an inconvenience, and that in digging up X or Y location, the continuity of service through that place for the people using it is fairly low on the list of things to be maintained. Clearly a parcel service would never work if you cannot consistently get the train, the parcels, the vans and whatever ground staff to a location to do their work. Say what we will about the guys in battered Ford Transits, but they negotiate all manner of curve balls daily to get stuff to people.
Just casually pointing out given most of the cross loading of these is done at the roadside, that Amazon vans will pass the disused parcel depot under GLC with fairly easy access with a roll cage to the platforms and much of Scotland’s rail network.
Clearly there will be challenges - but developments such as the Orkney drone deliveries - make you wonder if someone will have the boldness to innovate in similar (different) ways on rail … ?
Fleetmaster
Member
Amazon simply wouldn't countenance any relationship where they aren't the most important person in the room by a country mile.
It perhaps escapes people's attention that for their trunking operations they aren't using a large well established logistics provider with a massive fleet and network of depots, much less their own fleet of owned and operated trucks. Every single Amazon trailer you see on the road, with its trademark blue logo, is being hauled by an independent owner-driver, from Amazon warehouse to Amazon warehouse.
It says a lot that they sacrifice a little bit of brand continuity in this very public aspect of their work (some independents can have quite garishly painted trucks while others still can be grimy ugg-buckets) for an absolute focus on the bottom line.
They do this so they can keep costs ultra low, and exert a similar level of control over these critical cogs that they do over their human robots inside the warehouses. They are timed and tracked, to the second.
Seen in these terms, dealing with any railway would likely be alien to Amazon, but the UK one would be especially unpalatable.
It perhaps escapes people's attention that for their trunking operations they aren't using a large well established logistics provider with a massive fleet and network of depots, much less their own fleet of owned and operated trucks. Every single Amazon trailer you see on the road, with its trademark blue logo, is being hauled by an independent owner-driver, from Amazon warehouse to Amazon warehouse.
It says a lot that they sacrifice a little bit of brand continuity in this very public aspect of their work (some independents can have quite garishly painted trucks while others still can be grimy ugg-buckets) for an absolute focus on the bottom line.
They do this so they can keep costs ultra low, and exert a similar level of control over these critical cogs that they do over their human robots inside the warehouses. They are timed and tracked, to the second.
Seen in these terms, dealing with any railway would likely be alien to Amazon, but the UK one would be especially unpalatable.
Apart from the 5000+ Amazon intermodal containers moving around the USA rail network daily?
I'd love to see Amazon trying to haul in a driver for not getting away from a signal sharply enough and the ASLEF rep steps in....
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Different geographies/scales though. There isn't a single location where you can reach nearly every part of the USA in a single set of trucker's hours.
Well yes. But that isn't what was quoted.
But this is the point.
Every logistics operation is doing whatever it has to do to in order to keep costs low. Tesco (and other supermarkets, but Tesco are the most obvious) use rail because it is the cheapest way to serve their Scottish operations from their DCs at Daventry. They do this through using swap bodies - for example some of their stores in Scotland are served directly by swap bodies lifted off trains in Mossend and driven straight to store. That works for their particular DC and store network, as it has been designed (over time) specifically around Rail trunk hauls.
Fleetmaster
Member
Which of course only makes my point. In the USA, the primary use of railways is freight and Amazon is a blue chip high volume customer. What they say, undoubtedly goes. A ruthless for profit company contracted by a ruthless for profit company, for mutual benefit, with pretty much no other competing interests or influential third parties interfering with the bottom line. The virtual opposite of our railway.
How can it make your point if you stated dealing with any railway would be alien to Amazon? Over there they provide end to end logistics via the railway as well as offering intermodal space. Hardly alien.
That said the post I quoted was from another username, not yours. But now both seem to be merged. Creating multiple accounts to argue all and sundry in multiple threads is frankly weird.
90019
Established Member
This is not true.
They use haulage firms all the time - as an example Slam Transport have a huge amount of Amazon work and the majority of their units I see on the road are hauling Amazon trailers.
Snow1964
Established Member
Thats carries lot of regular (non urgent or bulky items), a lot of the express goes by air. Various operators operate Amazon services and now something like 80-90 dedicated cargo planes. The European hub is Leipzi-Halle. UK flights come into East Midlands (and smaller number to Southend).
UK rail has never got itself directly linked to the East Midlands airport transshipment operation to move bulk flows to other main depots.
Oddly a number of logistics hubs (multiple companies, not just Amazon) were built on brownfield sites that formerly had rail connections, but rail industry couldn't find a way to make it work and reconnect.
Adrian1980uk
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I think we need to remind ourselves of the 3 types of traffic here for supply chain distribution.
1. Manufacturer to main distribution warehouse. This can be within the UK or via the ports into the UK. Rail freight should have a major role to play in this, in fact all but the smallest of goods should be more suited to Rail.
2. Inter warehouse distribution, stocking up regional warehouses. Rail could have a role to play here - this is basically with Amazon example what we're talking about here but also looking at not only your DHL/DPD parcel traffic but the pallet line single pallet type distribution. It feels like rail has a role to play but the challenge is can it be flexible enough, Varamis are trying to prove it can and also can it be reliable enough, engineering works cannot suddenly stop the service for a night for example as these parcel companies are working on next day delivery.
3. Final mile type - to the door - rail has no role here, it's clearly white van man territory.
1. Manufacturer to main distribution warehouse. This can be within the UK or via the ports into the UK. Rail freight should have a major role to play in this, in fact all but the smallest of goods should be more suited to Rail.
2. Inter warehouse distribution, stocking up regional warehouses. Rail could have a role to play here - this is basically with Amazon example what we're talking about here but also looking at not only your DHL/DPD parcel traffic but the pallet line single pallet type distribution. It feels like rail has a role to play but the challenge is can it be flexible enough, Varamis are trying to prove it can and also can it be reliable enough, engineering works cannot suddenly stop the service for a night for example as these parcel companies are working on next day delivery.
3. Final mile type - to the door - rail has no role here, it's clearly white van man territory.
The Planner
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That is something that they will have to learn to live with by learning diversionary routes. Its not as though its coming as a surprise to them.
Adrian1980uk
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That's true, but there does need to be diversion routes available, if there isn't then rail is a non starter
The USA logistics model and UK logistics are completely different. Apart from.the name on the side they have pretty much nothing in common.
So people keep saying and i'm fully aware of that. The post I quoted suggested dealing with any railway would be unfamiliar to Amazon which simply wasn't true.
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