I was preparing to mention in my geography lecture about how much cheaper it generally is to transport bulk cargo by water instead of by land, when I realized I have exactly zero hard data to back this up.
My Internet search skills fail me. I can’t find any big average numbers for the cost of shipping freight one ton-mile by water versus one ton-mile by rail or semi-tractor trailer. Can anybody help?
If there aren’t any figures averaged over the whole universe of freight, how about the cost of shipping a ton of crude oil in a tanker car or a tanker truck versus shipping in a Very Large Crude Carrier?
I’m also hoping for reasonably modern figures, within the last twenty years or so. I found a NYT article which shows shipping costs per ton-mile on the Great Lakes were between 8 and 9 times less than on the railroads, but it was from 1911.
I don’t have the figures in fron to of me either. However, I have worked on transportation and logistics systems and my wife’s family owns an importing and national distribution company. You are correct that shipping by cargo ship is way, way cheaper than by plane.
One thing that might help a little is referencing container ships rather than just tanker ships. Those are the ones that get lifted up on the ships by crane on one end and lifted up and dropped straight onto a truck trailer on the other. They are very economical to move around and the containers themselves hold a huge amount of product.
I could ask my wife to look up prices on each for comparable routes but she is away and the moment and that would be pretty specific.
I assume you mean less labor intensive per unit of freight, as opposed to per trip. And that’s the big thing – the very largest container ships these days can carry up to 15,000 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs – although most containers these days are 40 feet so cut that number in half). That’d be a train fifty miles long.
You also need to consider where you are shipping to. For example, I heard a comment last night that is is really cheap right now to ship by boat to China because of all the ships that are going back empty. The exact same amount of cargo coming from China to North America would be more expensive to ship.
Back around 10 years ago I recall shipping by cargo ship uses the lowest amount of energy, but freight rail was a pretty close second, trucks about 10x that.
I work for a freight forwarder; I make arrangements for transport by truck, rail, and ocean carrier every day. If we have to move a container for a long distance inland, rail is less expensive by a long shot as compared to trucking, but is not as fast. Both cost more than ocean freight for a similar distance.
The exact cost for ocean freight varies by several factors. First, some carriers are fast and have frequent sailings, and are expensive. Others are slow, sail less frequently and have generally poorer service. And of course there is every variation in between. Second, some destinations are more expensive, and not just because of how far away they are. You can ship a container across the Pacific Ocean to the far east for less than you can take one across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. It also depends on the volume. If you are shipping a lot of cargo to one area, you can negotiate a contract with a steamship line that will give you a lower cost per container to destinations there. If you are doing a single shipment to a given port, you will pay the tariff rate, which is going to be higher, sometimes by a very large amount. Another factor is the type of equipment you need. If you’re shipping in a standard 20-foot or 40-foot container, that’s the lowest cost. If you need a flat rack, an open top, a refrigerated container, or no container at all (break bulk), it’s going to cost more, often a lot more. Finally, it depends on the commodity being shipped. Hazardous material is going to cost more. At the lower end, certain raw materials get a low rate. In between there are often different rates for vehicles, machinery, general merchandise, household goods, and so on.
These days, there is a big increase in export shipments. The weak dollar has a larger number of foreign companies buying American. In some cases we have to wait weeks for space on an outgoing vessel. One of our major carriers is not even taking any new bookings from the west coast to Asia or India, because of the shortage of equipment and vessel space; they are totally booked solid for months.
So in answer to the question of how much it costs per ton per mile, the answer is “it depends.”
One thing I want to clarify is that I’m more interested in how much it actually costs the railroad or ship owner to move one ton a mile, as opposed to how high a price they charge the customer to move that ton. I.e. removing all considerations of return cargo, insurance, onloading and offloading, etc., how much engine fuel does it cost per ton to push a fully loaded supertanker one mile, versus how much diesel does it cost per ton to push an equivalent number of trains one mile?
What a coincidence. Just a little while ago, I started this thread on a succesful freight-train test run between China and Germany. In it, I posted:
This will be of interest mainly to train freaks – and maybe shipping enthusiasts? I like trains, although I’m not what you would call a train freak myself. Still, I find the prospect of a regular freight-train service that takes “15 to 18 days from China to Germany” and would be “twice as fast as a sea-going vessel” and “considerably cheaper than air freight” interesting.
Note that they say “considerably cheaper than air freight,” not “cheaper than sea freight.” But they seem to think they can make it a viable alternative to sea freight. Perhaps because of the speed?
When the water is high but not so high the push boats can’t work, the cost / ton of ‘Bunker C’ from Tulsa to New Orleans in ‘fuel expended’ is as low as it can get. The currant makes a big difference.
Then you would be asking for an unrealistic – or perhaps a simplistic answer, since the cost of the fluel is only a small portion of the costs for the owners of the respective companies.
You probably want to compare trains to river barges rather than ocean freight, since they are competing more closely.
From working with freight (though some years ago), my understanding was that the shipping methods, from cheapest to more expensive were:[ol]
[li]pipeline bulk transport[/li][li]boat shipment (bulk)[/li][li]boat shipment (containerized)[/li][li]rail shipment (bulk)[/li][li]rail shipment (containerized)[/li][li]truck (bulk)[/li][li]truck (containerized)[/li][li]truck (mixed load)[/li][li]air freight (containerized)[/li][li]air freight (mixed load)[/li][/ol] Bulk shipment refers to the entire vehicle filled with a single commodity, such as oil, iron ore, coal, grain, etc. This can be, for example, oil tanker ships, a railroad tank car, or a tanker truck. Containerized is using a container rather like the back of a semi-trailer, delivered to a single address. Note that boat or rail shipment of such containers is actually mixed-mode: the final stage of delivery is usually made by truck.
Also, this list is ordered only by cost. For speed, you could pretty much just go in reverse order. Flexibility also varies: trucks can go most anywhere (on land), trains can go wherever there are rails, pipelines only where they are existing, and boats & planes are limited to available port and airports.
Except that the cheapest (pipeline) is in a real sense also the fastest. IOW, when you insert a product (say, oil) at one end of the pipeline, you don’t have to wait for that oil to appear at the far end - you simply take the next oil that arrives.
(This of course assumes that the pipeline carries a single product, which is not always the case.)
There is a significant reduction in cost of sea based travel over land based travel that hasn’t been mentioned. Both rail, and trucks have to travel the entire way over roads (rails are simply special case of roads.) It costs money. Roads are maintained by taxes, and trucks pay a lot of taxes.
Ships pay for docking and harborage, true, but, trucks and trains have equivalent costs as well. But the sea itself does not require maintenance, or ownership.
Not the sea, but harbors DO require maintenance. And much of the shipping by boat or barge is not on the sea, but on inland rivers; and those do require regular maintenance (dredging, etc.) as well as lock and dam facilities to be able to navigate the river. And up here in Minnesota, they require Coast Guard icebreakers to open the lanes to the port of Duluth on Lake Superior.
From working in the oil industry, shipping anything by sea cargo from a US port to another US port is very expensive. There is some law that requires all such ships to be made in the US, fly American flags and the entire crew be American too.
Also although pipelines are not treated as transportation by some, that’s what they essentially are. You can transport, gasoline, diesel, etc all in one pipeline.