Put the freight on to the rails

[GearJammer]

There are several rail served freight terminals in this country who currently have no service what so ever, and those that do such as Ely only receive delivery of aggregates which arrives by the train load. In essence the freight terminals already exist but nobody wants to use them!

And the main reason for that is people want there goods delivered to their door/premises...... not a rail yard the other side of town!

 

[northwichcat]

It all depends on what these companies produce and where it goes! I'll start with Royal Mail. The sorting/delivery office (I'm assuming it's very similar to the one we have here in Scunthorpe) will probably have everything pre-sorted ready for the posties to deliver on their rounds, probably coming from Warrington.

Actually Knutsford is a weird one when it comes to Royal Mail. It has a Warrington postcode (WA16) but the Royal Mail lorries arriving in Knutsford come from what they call the Cheshire regional sorting office which is based in Crewe.

I can't find a website for Middlewich Food Trays, so I'll be making assumptions here. From what I can see from various reviews on the net, it's a low cost but high volume producer of plastic products, which is ideal for local or semi-regional distribution. Ie you may have a pallet's worth of stock for Bolton, Manchester, Stockport, Crewe, Macclesfield and Chester everyday. Can you imaging what the costs of building and maintaining a rail loading facility will do to this company, not to mention the cost of hiring part of a train (or several, if shunting is required) for a journey of a maximum of 50 miles?

This kind of lorry can be seen transporting their goods: https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7240/7028607433_bf9824ca95_b.jpg I've seen those lorries in Huddersfield so they don't just serve the local area.

I'm in agreement with you, in that as much freight should go on to rail as possible, but having worked in distribution in 1 shape or form for all my working life. I possibly have a better grasp of what's possible, what's feasable, and more importantly, what's economical than most people on here. Several pallets a day from 1 company isn't going to make any difference to congestion on the roads, but will push prices through the roof for some products.

I was trying to give an example I could think of where one company acting alone wouldn't have a viable business case for using rail freight (Bentley) but where running alongside other companies might have viability.

Other people have mentioned the big everyday car manufacturers who import a load of cars, which probably could operate a freight train constituting of just their own cars.

Are you willing to pay the extra costs incurred?

I'd be interested to see how the costs compare - and not just a lorry costs £x to transport the goods while a freight train costs £x+y but also how much road damage would be reduced by and how many accidents would be eliminated. For instance, yesterday Highway engineers and emergency services were on the M6 in Cheshire due to an incident with a lorry which caused the carriageway to be covered in oil.

 

[6Gman]

Actually Knutsford is a weird one when it comes to Royal Mail. It has a Warrington postcode (WA16) but the Royal Mail lorries arriving in Knutsford come from what they call the Cheshire regional sorting office which is based in Crewe.

Sorry to go off-topic, but I think you'll find that the Crewe sorting office closed several years ago. A friend of mine was a manager there.

 

[northwichcat]

Sorry to go off-topic, but I think you'll find that the Crewe sorting office closed several years ago. A friend of mine was a manager there.

OK I didn't realise. It doesn't seem to have affected what times Royal Mail lorries arrive in Knutsford.

 

[al78]

Regarding the cost of goods and transport, how much of the final cost of a product actually represents the transport cost? Until that is estimated then statements like "costs will increase" don't mean much unless these costs can be quantified. If the proportion of the total costs represented by transport is only small then even doubling this cost may only result in a price rise of a few percent at most.

 

[deltic]

Why didnt the railways get into pallet traffic - my understanding is that there are a couple? of operators who bulk haul pallets around the country with loads being made up and split at local warehouses for collection delivery to individual businesses. I seem to recall a trial train operated from Barking to Glasgow a few years ago. If the railways had moved in earlier it would have been a more natural product to takeover from wagonload.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Why didnt the railways get into pallet traffic - my understanding is that there are a couple? of operators who bulk haul pallets around the country with loads being made up and split at local warehouses for collection delivery to individual businesses. I seem to recall a trial train operated from Barking to Glasgow a few years ago. If the railways had moved in earlier it would have been a more natural product to takeover from wagonload.

Freightliner tried hard on this - even patenting smaller containers (SCIDS)- aka "small containers in demountable sizes" - and Speedlink tried Minilink and Maxilink. (in the mid 1980's) - both failed as road transport was too solidly entrenched . flexible and cheaper.

The railways (as said before) - are better at bulk movements over (preferably) 200+ miles - and of course a lot of the container traffics (admittedly imported stuff ...does this "break bulk" stuff.