Re: Finemores to merge with Toll

[lbrown2@bigpond.com (Brown Family)]

On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:41:51 +1100, "Adam Dunning"
<adamdunning@start.com.au> wrote:

Hi Adam

>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.

I would like to comment on each of the 3 important points you have
brought up:

>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.
>
When double-stacking is permitted, and that is only on tracks west of
Adelaide and Parkes, then the height permitted is, I think, 6.4
metres, well and truly in excess of 4.6m permitted for road.

The problem, of course, is that double stacking is not at all
permitted in or out of the three east-coast capitals. Instead of
pushing for rails from Alice Springs-Darwin, the money would best be
spent on allowing double-stacking between all Australian capital
cities.  To do otherwise is like feeding electricity into a city power
grid through an extension cord (or connecting to the internet via a
14.4kb modem!). No matter how fast or how high AS-D becomes, traffic
flows will be strangled by stupid things like steam-age tunnels in the
Adelaide Hills and worse.......

If, and this is a big if, they ever get Melbourne-Darwin up, this
could be the impetus needed to have double-stacking into all the
capital citiies. I've just turned 50 today, but will I ever see it in
the remaining years of my lifetime? I doubt it. I think it takes no
less that 50 years on average before mooted projects ever become facts
on the ground.

>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.
>
Road has a tremendous time advantage because it travels no slower than
rail but does it without wastimg time doing inter-modal transhipment.
If rail is to have a share in time-critical freight, which it doesn't
at the moment, then it must be considerably faster than road.

If rail can get freight from Melbourne to Sydney in less than 9 hours,
then road loses all that advantage since time loading and off-loading
can be incorporated into overall shipment times which should be  still
be faster than road overall. 

>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.
>
This is the hardest one to beat because it requires such a drastic
mindset change, that it is not likely to be acceptable to most people.

If, rather than have inter-modal change over points in the city
centres as we do in Melbourne and Sydney, but, rather, had them in the
outer suburbs so that final delivery could be by smaller trucks and
delivery vans, something that already exists with purely road-based
haulage, then it removes the need (and the cost) to bring freight
right into town. 

For those shipments that require sem-trailer volumes to single
clients, then private-sidings are the best option. Railway authorities
for years have discouraged private rail sidings despite being asked to
provide them by large companies. To my mind, they represent ultimately
the best partnership between rail and shipper. 

>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.
>
I agree totally. The only thing that will swing interstate transport
in favour of rail is to spend all the money that the last three
federal government reports have recommended. And I can't see the
current government as having sufficient vision or the political will
to make that happen.

Les Brown