The logic of logistics

[hexhome]

You may be right about decreasing numbers, but experience suggests not. At each successive increase in maximum lorry size or axle weight we have been told lorry movements will fall. Has not the opposite happened, precisely because cheap transport, which allows firms to externalise their costs, replaces warehousing. In any case, more big lorries on our roads is also a cost.
I'm no expert, but I do know that road impact goes up by at least the cube of axle weight and that HGVs do not pay their track costs. So another cost is the increasing number of potholes.

Transport is not cheap, firms externalise to logistics companies to reduce costs. This is probably the main reason for the reduction. Warehousing does not cut down vehicle movements, it increases them. Registrations of UK HGVs has dropped by 7% since 1990. Over 38 tonne operation is only allowable for 'Combined (Road to Rail) Transport. Axle weights are reduced or modified for operation over 40 tonnes. http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/d ... -guide.pdf

I'm not here to argue the rights and wrongs of HGVs but lets have the correct facts before spouting off about them. We all hate sharing the road with them (actually, I hate sharing with cars more). I dispair at all the ill-informed 'facts' that are posted about HGVs here and Cyclists on HGV forums. Someone must be wrong?

[Mark1978]

24/7 working would do that. If the same vehicle is on the road 24 hours a day you can get the same job done with less lorries. So you could have a decrease in the absolute numbers on the roads yet still have an increase in the miles they are driving.

[hexhome]

Yes, supermarkets are now open 24/7. As I often say, hate lorries - stop using supermarkets. People won't of course, we are addicted to convenience. That is why all those lorries are there, your convenience. Incidentally there is a corresponding drop in the number of HGV drivers employed in the UK.

[horizon]

Yes, supermarkets are now open 24/7. As I often say, hate lorries - stop using supermarkets. People won't of course, we are addicted to convenience. That is why all those lorries are there, your convenience. Incidentally there is a corresponding drop in the number of HGV drivers employed in the UK.

We do and we have. We are almost there with a 100% supermarket-free Christmas:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=71232

[Mike Sales]

Sorry to carry on spouting, but have the new laws allowing bigger lorries actually reduced movements?
Externalising logistics is not the same thing as externalising costs.
We are all keen on convenience, and cheapness. When an individual customer deciding where to buy s/he is faced with choosing between a higher price and a possible future reduction in lorries on the road, or immediate cheapness, which is certain.
"Warehousing does not cut down vehicle movements". Well yes, as it is practised in some circumstances. TCs chair did an few extra road miles. We have been told in this thread that transport managers make logical decisions within system as it is. Of course. Some of us are saying that as things are all the costs of transport are not visible in this system, and that were the price signals presented to managers to include the externals the decisions would be different. Consumer choice does not work as a mechanism to do this.
Do HGVs pay their track costs? I need to do some research here.
I am not attacking drivers here, some are very good. I am questioning the pricing system, and pointing out a few problems. Please do not get defensive and describe those who disagree with you as cetaceans.

[Mark1978]

It all depends on how you do it and what you think is better. e.g. 10 small lorries running through the day travelling less milage. Or 5 lorries doing double the distance 24 hours a day. Or does it make no difference?

[Mike Sales]

It all depends on how you do it and what you think is better. e.g. 10 small lorries running through the day travelling less milage. Or 5 lorries doing double the distance 24 hours a day. Or does it make no difference?

I don't think it does depend on the choice you offer. That is not how it works. Most lorries are not full, the logistics of supply demand otherwise. If transport was more expensive different choices would be made by managers.

[hexhome]

It all depends on how you do it and what you think is better. e.g. 10 small lorries running through the day travelling less milage. Or 5 lorries doing double the distance 24 hours a day. Or does it make no difference?

I don't think it does depend on the choice you offer. That is not how it works. Most lorries are not full, the logistics of supply demand otherwise. If transport was more expensive different choices would be made by managers.

I bow down to your informed and superior knowledge. All I will say is that it ain't going to change any day soon and until we learn to live with HGVs (and they with us) the better for all of us.

[hexhome]

Yes, supermarkets are now open 24/7. As I often say, hate lorries - stop using supermarkets. People won't of course, we are addicted to convenience. That is why all those lorries are there, your convenience. Incidentally there is a corresponding drop in the number of HGV drivers employed in the UK.

We do and we have. We are almost there with a 100% supermarket-free Christmas:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=71232

Excellent news It feels very lonely trying to persuade people that it is perfectly feasible and no more expensive.

[Mike Sales]

I bow down to your informed and superior knowledge. All I will say is that it ain't going to change any day soon and until we learn to live with HGVs (and they with us) the better for all of us.

I don't think my knowledge is superior, but if you bow down to it perhaps I have managed to make my points successfully.
We have had to learn to live with lorries. Many of us go out of our way to avoid the roads busy with cars and lorries. It usually means a longer and less convenient route. When we do use these roads we take as much care as we can, and the experience is often hideous.
We are discussing whether a different system of transport might be preferable and whether taking into account the disadvantages of the present system are unaccounted in the making of decisions by transport managers. Or of transport ministers.
You are right that no one will pay any attention to a few cyclists, but that need not stop us thinking about improving things.

[horizon]

... and until we learn to live with HGVs (and they with us) the better for all of us.

hexhome: do you mean live with HGVs as cyclists or as consumers? I don't often interreact with HGVs on the road and for me there are few issues. On the topic of logistics I, like many others, have doubts about the true efficiency of long distance trucking as opposed to the marginal costs to suppliers and consumers.

[rjb]

Its cheaper to catch langoustine's (Dublin bay prawns) of the Scottish coast, pack them up and send them by air freight to china where they are prepared for consumption and air freighted back to us, than it is for them to be processed in a local factory in scotland.

[mrjemm]

Going back to an earlier point.

If it is more efficient/uses less fuel to fly flowers from Argentina or cheese from the Galapagos (Tortoise Cheddar, it's lovely...), or whatever, surely all that says is that the local systems are ridiculously poor. And more importantly, priorities are insane.

Shipping is a subject I know a bit better (though it's been some years), and as much as I like ships, it is surely absurd that the largest moving objects (I mean man-made, rather than tectonic plates, etc.) on the planet, container ships, are mostly carrying plastic tat from China with horrendous built-in obsolescence (i.e. it falls apart in minutes and never did a good job in the 1st place), and returning largely empty, or loaded with our waste. The economies of scale and all the amazing logistical science in the world does nothing but prove that a large percentage of the planet's (not our) resources are wasted.

Ah yes, it creates trade and employment. Of course, that's all that matters. As long as we can keep making more resource wasting, self centred clones of ourselves. Do you really need another one? Why?

Ooops, my thread drift became a favourite rant, hehehe.

[axel_knutt]

The point about logistics is that lorries going to the distribution centre are carrying goods that come from suppliers in the same area, and lorries coming from the centre are carrying goods for customers in the same area. The two are not the same.

You may be able to find a bag of potatoes that went from the farm to the centre and back to a customer next door to the farm, but that's just one bag, and you can't make a lorry pay carrying just one bag at a time. The unit cost of transport is the cost of the fuel divided by the number of products carried, so a central depot enables you to fill larger lorries with more goods going to or from the same location.

If a postman delivered mail directly as it was emptied out of the post box it might take him all day to take one letter to the Hebrides, whilst another postie is spending all day taking another letter to the Hebrides from a box 100 yards down the road. Solution: take the letters to a sorting office first, and put all the letters for the Hebrides in one bag together.

[horizon]

If you make transport cheaper (bigger roads, bigger lorries, cheaper diesel, lower wages) you can build your distribution centres further apart. But making it cheaper may have been very expensive as some things have no price or cost placed on them when the sums are done.