A quantitative study on transport time for sustainable road freight logistics

Abstract

Referring to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IFEU), road freight transport will increase by 80% between 2004 and 2025. In order to reduce the negative environmental effects freight transport needs to be arranged more sustainably in future. Although rail and water transport is less climate-damaging than road freight, companies hesitate to relocate road freight transport to more environmentally friendly modes because these are slower. But at the moment it is not proven to what extent the majority of customers actually require the fastest possible delivery for their orders. In case longer transport times are accepted in the market, rail and water logistics would be an attractive and sustainable alternative. In this contribution more than 5000 freight transport orders handled in continental Europe have been analyzed in terms of time constraints given by the customers. It can be concluded that there is a significant amount of road transport which could be handled in a slower and more sustainable way. To do so, it is crucial that future transport management systems are able to identify non time-critical orders and support a modal shift.