Abstract
Over the past several decades, the transportation of raw materials (logs) has increasingly shifted from the railway to trucks. However, the long-term sustainability of this shift is being questioned due to the shortage of truck drivers, fluctuation of fuel prices, and changes in hours of service laws. The industry is interested in the possibility to shift more logs back to the railway but the impact of such a shift on truckers has not been investigated. This study attempted to quantify the impact of such a change on the operations of log truckers by calculating time efficiency (percentage of daily hours of service for revenue activities) and value efficiency (average loaded versus total ton-kilometers per day) between a truck only and multimodal (truck/rail) alternatives. We used actual data from the forest products industry companies and truck performance data from an earlier study to investigate the impact through case studies in four different locations of the upper Midwest, US. The results of our analysis revealed that in three out of our four case studies, re-routing log movements through rail yard/siding improved the time efficiency and value efficiency. Finally, our sensitivity analysis found that increases in average truck speed and maximum hours or service had higher impact on multimodal transportation than in truck-only system.
Highlights
The economics of the Upper Midwest of US depends heavily on forest products industry
Rail transportation has traditionally offered a safe and economical alternative for log movements from aggregation points to the mills, but its use has been in decline over the past decades, as railroads have sought improved economics by prioritizing high-volume and long-distance shipments
Actual road network provided by US Department of Transportation (US DOT) [12] was used for the analysis as well as information in rail sidings and network collected from rail service providers
Summary
The economics of the Upper Midwest of US depends heavily on forest products industry. For the forest industry, minimizing transportation cost of raw materials is critical, due to the relatively low value and high weight of the materials. With origins throughout the forests and relatively short hauls, the single mode transportation by trucks has been the most prevalent mode for moving logs from logging sites (or forest landings) to the final destination (e.g., mills) in one continuous move. Rail transportation has traditionally offered a safe and economical alternative for log movements from aggregation points to the mills (especially for pulp logs), but its use has been in decline over the past decades, as railroads have sought improved economics by prioritizing high-volume A high number of origin–destination pairs, and low value, log movements do not align well with the current return of investment expectations by railroads. The rates considered adequate by larger railways are considered excessive by shippers, shifting more logs off their rails and onto trucks
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