Re: Finemores to merge with Toll

["Adam Dunning" <adamdunning@start.com.au>]

I think i've already said this, but I'll say it again, cause I can't see it
listed in the group.  Yes Finemores carry alot of inter-capital
traffic/freight, but then they also do alot of the distribution and
logistics themselves.  Groups like Holden, International/Iveco etc. just
give them ALL the vehicles produced to be distributed.  A car bound for
Melbourne from Adelaide WILL go through Wagga.  Cars for Adelaide out of
Melbourne WILL go through Wagga.

Also, a lot of this inter-capital traffic/freight is not complete trailer
loads and also weird shapes and sizes, so how are they going to use a rail
carriage efficiently, when they can't use a trailer efficiently?  Alot of
Finemores trailers on linehaul are now maximum cubic capacity.  The only way
they will be able to work on rail efficiently will be with containers, which
will greatly reduce the maximum height that the freight can be.

Now, I know this is anti-rail what I'm about to say, but I'm going to say
it.  Road has three benefits over rail.
1) Trailers can carry taller freight without much hassel by getting a drop
frame trailer of some description.  The closest that rail has to this as an
alternative is TNT's 5 pack wagons which they built for their Automotive
devision.  Incidently, the containers are the maximum size allowable by the
rail loading gauge.  These containers do carry some heavy components, but
other times they carry bulky components.  Under a general access, these
containers can be carried on trucks to a maximum height (road to top of the
box) of 4.6m as long as the combination's mass is 20% below that allowed for
the combination.  For example, under mass management, a common 6 axle single
trailer combination is alloud 45 tonnes with a maximum height of 4.3m, while
when alloud to go to 4.6m, they can only gross 36 tonnes, but for cubic,
this is more than acceptable.  For a 9 axle B-Double, mass management allows
68 tonnes at the maximum height of 4.3m, while 4.6m allows 54.4 tonnes.  Now
in cubic freight, weight isn't the limiting factor, volume is.
Unfortunately for rail, there isn't the economical volume available to
forwarders.  Cubico (nee Boxcar) run some enormous volume boxes (in the
5pack well wagons I might note), but they run some even larger capacity
b-doubles on the nations highways.

Why not use drop deck roadraillers you might say? Yes they are road
trailers, but there is two problems.  All the trailers have a full chassis
to take the weight of the other trailers, irrespective of where they are
placed in the trailer rail consist which presents the two points. 1) The
frames of these trailers are high off of the ground which reduces the
maximum cubic capacity of the trailers taking the road and rail loading
gauges into account, and secondly, the frames have to be straight to take
the load of the other loaded trailers.  These trailers also have a VERY high
tare weight which makes them only suitable for light freight.

2) Time factor.  I know that rail claims overnight and next night delivery
of containers from Melbourne to Sydney and Melb to Brisbane respectively,
but the real fact is it can take 2 or 3 days in total.  Eg. (melb-syd)  The
container is delivered to NR at midday, and loaded onto the train which
departs at 8 or 9 o'clock (for example).  The train gets to Sydney 12hours
latter (i guess) and gets unloaded.  Assuming the truck to collect the
container has an early enough timeslot and the box is ready to collect, the
freight could be at the customer by midday that day.  So one day is
acheivable.  But if the box arrives too late in Melbourne, the container has
to be re-booked onto another train.  If there is no available spaces, then
the box has to wait and wait for who knows how long.

With the road on the other handthe freight can be loaded up untill the truck
is ready to leave and be in Sydney 12 hours latter (even allowing for driver
breaks and NSW's Safetycam system) which means the freight could be being
unloaded at 8am instead of midday.  with JIT systems, this 4 hours can be
critical.

and finally

3) Road has the benefit of no/lessmultiple handling, which I started to
elude too in the previous point.  With a container going by rail, the
container has to be collected, taken to the customer, loaded, taken to NR or
who ever and unloaded.  If lucky, the box could be put straight on the train
reducing the amount of handelling, otherwise it is put down on the ground
and loaded on latter.  At the other end, the process is reversed.  The
container is taken off of the train and possibly put onto a waiting truck or
put on the ground and loaded onto a truck latter on before being tken to the
customer, unloaded and the container de-hired.  With sensitive freight,
these extra handelling steps can cause some expensive damage to the freight
(but I'm not going to say that Australia's highways won't do the same), and
some customers just can't accept this extra handelling.

Now before you start flaming me saying I'm anti-rail, I'm not.  All I'm
doing is pointing out the benefits that road has.  I'll admit that when it
comes to bulk items such as coal, grain, logs iron ore etc., rail has the
advantage over the medium to long haul by having reduced costs.

Even though Tolls say they will be utting more of Finemores work on the
rail, there is only very little that they can move onto the rail.

Adam

"David Bromage" <dbromage@fang.omni.com.au> wrote in message
4x1k6.42$2U6.1673@news0.optus.net.au">news:4x1k6.42$2U6.1673@news0.optus.net.au...
> Maurie Daly (mauried@tpg.com.au) wrote:
> > The problem with this idea is that Finemores are based in Wagga and
> > its very hard to see how a significant amount of their freight could
> > be moved by rail,given that Wagga or Bomen simply doesnt have any
> > large kind of marshalling yard.
>
> True they are based in Wagga, but they carry a lot of inter-capital
traffic.
>
> Cheers
> David