Railway or road transport ?

The ?Lorries on the tracks? slogan has recently become very popular and readers of this blog may find it often repeated in news bulletins also an argument in support for environmental protection. Unfortunately the matter is not so obvious and obvious as it might seem at a first glance. Below we shall point out advantages and disadvantages in brief.

When railway transport is a good choice?

• if seller loaded products to container, which exceed permissible weight, using train we could carry heavy products without necessity to unload some of these products in the port.
• If place of delivery is near to railway terminals located in such cities like : Gliwice, Warszawa, Łódź, Radomsko, Poznań, Kutno, Brzeg Dolny, Dębica, cost of that transport is lower than road transport.
• Railway transport decreases risk of products damage, because there is lower probability for accidents than in the case of road transport. Less often is dependent on repairs of road infrastructure and atmospheric conditions.
• if delivery of goods is not urgent we can use railway transport whereas it can takes 2-3 days.
• That transport is profitable if we won’t have additional costs beacuse of late giving back empty container to Gdynia ( so-called : detention ). Preferably is to obtain agreement from outfitter for submission empty container on depot in country.
• it is not necessary for possess own railway siding, because transport between railway terminal and warehouse of customer is going by standard railway semitrailer.

It is better to avoid railway transport when:

• delivery of goods is very urgent.
• if address of delivery is far from railway terminal, because this part of transport costs most of all.
• if unloading of goods takes more than 4 hours, it’s necessary to know that, there can be additional costs.
• if container must be transported in controlled temperature, you should remember that there is no way to connect aggregate to eletricity.

In conclusion not every container can be move for tracks. Unfortunately we don’t have railway connection with many places in Poland, because of this such transport can be more expensive than road transport. The most important criterion with choice is valuable time, so when we don’t have enough time we should use road carrier.

If you still have dilemmas contact with us! Give us only some of necessary information and we will calculate which type of transport will be the best in your case.