Road freight shipping is the best form of short quantity internal transportation of cargo due to its flexibility of routes and its lack of need for big infrastructure at the point of delivery.
Railway cargo transport is the best form of internal and external long distance shipping on land when available due to its reliability, safety, speed and cost efficiency.
Combining both constitutes intermodal continental haulage, which is the transportation of goods either by transloading containers from one vehicle to the other or by loading the truck together with the freight into a cargo train (this practice is known as railway piggyback transport or roro train). This reduces carbon emissions and combines the flexibility of trucking with the speed and efficiency of railways to get a step closer to environmental sustainability.
As one can imagine, this kind of mixture needs a lot of knowledge regarding possible routes, options at hand, contracts and regulations from the logistics agent to achieve the desired results in time reduction while maintaining cost efficiency. An experienced operator with a vast portfolio of partners is required to go intermodal and that is why most providers will just offer trucking as a possible solution for your business. Ask us if your business is apt to go intermodal.