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Morning. Who wants to hear some dry logistics stuff putting @grantshapps straight? Michael Gr, sorry, Grant, on R4 implied eveyrthing is fine because 80% of freight moves unaccompanied in & out of the UK. This is simultaneously true & a distortion.
The 80% refers to containers. Containers are different from trailers. Containers are literally that. The big steel boxes you see on container ships. They get dropped off at port, decoupled from the trailers & shipped to wherever. Then collected & delivered.
I did say this was dry.
Containers are an efficient way to shift freight in bulk. You typically load them floor to ceiling without using pallets to maximise the load. This means on arrival, the freight has to be removed case by case, palletised & shrinkwrapped for transit security.
The process is called destuffing & typically takes three or four workers between four & five hours to complete. It's labour intensive. Trailers on the other hand are loaded with goods already on pallets, wrapped up & ready to go. It's thirty minutes tops to load a 44" trailer
Pallet dimensions are standardised at 1m x 1.2m or 1m x 0.8m for Euro pallets. Bloody Europeans. Trailers, warehouse racking & forklifts are all built to these standards thus allowing goods to move through the chain quickly.
So, you have trailers that facilitate fast moving freight & containers that give you cheap bulk shipping. Containers are great for manufacturers, trailers are great for retail, food, booze, generally stuff that turns over in days rather than weeks or months.
Clearly, a lot of stuff we consume requires fast supply chains & so we shift it on trailers. Therefore when Grant says crisis? What crisis? 80% of freight moves unaccompanied, he's not lying but not being honest either.
Told you it was dry & boring. Imagine being me.
Told you it was dry & boring. Imagine being me.
