- 15 To summarize, half of all domestic shipments of western lumber and wood products manufactures move to other United States regions, but very few paper products shipments are made from the West to other United States regions. Approximately half of all paper products shipments go from the West by rail and the other half go by truck; more lumber and wood products move by rail than by truck. A substantial portion of forest products shipments are made at weights generally too great for trucks to haul on the public highway. The greater the distance shipped, the less likely it is that trucks will be used. Another point should be added. The 1963 Census of Transportation, which supplied the data from which these conclusions are based, did not collect shipments with information on shipments made within the "local areas" of manufacturing plants or for outside the United States destinations. Moreover, it provided information only on shipments of manufactured products. Therefore, the Census neglects important movements of inputs and by-products such as logs and wood chips. Were information available about these short local hauls and shipments in inputs, the part played in forest products transportation by trucks would undoubtedly be far greater. Cost Savings Possibilities Railroad Rate Reduction What are the possibilities for transportation cost reduction in the West? Perhaps such rail innovations as larger equipment and the unit train may lower costs, and it is argued that incentive rate reductions on lumber and plywood by the railroads may help lessen transport expenses. 14/ In certain cases such rates may prove of substantial benefits to shippers. 15/ However, even with the lowest possible long-distance rail or water rates, a substantial portion of forest products movement would be by truck. As it is, trucks provide carriage from the mill to the railhead and often they are called upon again to move the goods from railhead to final producer. In fact, a recent survey found that 17.1% of lumber and wood products firms and 19.3% of paper manufacturing firms did not have rail sidings. 16/ According to the survey all lumber manufacturers, including those with rail access, received on the average 54% of their inbound freight by truck. Paper manufacturers received 34% by truck. Outbound, 50% of the paper and 32% of the lumber moved by truck. 17/ Moreover, of lumbering establishments which have recently moved their locations, 12.5% left locations with rail sidings and settled in ones without sidings. Some 12.0% of paper manufactures did the same. 18/ Such apparent rejection of rail carriage on the part of many firms may be quite rational. Trucking provides a faster more flexible service which covers more territory, especially in the West, than does rail. 19/ The reduced transit time allows savings in inventory costs; less need be stockpiled so less warehouse space is required. Because trucking provides these important benefits which other modes do not, and if truck rates remain competitive, trucks will probably play at least as large a role in the future as they do today. Design Weight Reduction One rather extensively used method of lowering costs in highway and rail transportation is to reduce the design weight of vehicles so that greater payloads may be obtained without change in gross equipment weight. Lighter - 16 equipment allows lower operating costs for a given payload and may allow equipment manufacturing economies incidental to weight saving. 20/ Primarily though, for every pound of tare weight saved and replaced with cargo, revenue can be increased, especially if, as is often the case with trucks, most shipments are at full legal gross weight. The practice of vehicle weight reductions has about reached the level of diminishing returns in trucking. Besides, any economies obtained by substituting design weight for revenue tons can be achieved more feasibly simply by raising the maximum allowable gross weight. Increased Sizes and Weights A basic source of transportation cost reduction is increased vehicle capacity. Ships become larger and heavier, railroads increase car sizes and train lengths, pipeline widths expand, airplanes multiply cargo space, and in all cases transportation costs fall. Only trucks have been limited in length, width, height and weight by Federal or state legislation and, as Table 10 shows, restrictions are sometimes more severe now than they were 35 years ago. It is instructive to attempt to quantify the savings in transport cost which can come about through changes in these size and weight variables. Table 11 gives the results of weight increases alone. It is applicable to linehaul expense with two-way hauls. What would be the result of doubling allowable gross weight to 120,000 pounds (possible for a 3-S2-3 combination) if all current forest products traffic from the western states were loaded on truck combinations of 60,000 pounds gross weight (typical for 2-S2 combinations)? Table 11 indicates that costs per ton-mile of payload would fall 26.8%. Total forest products ton-miles originating in the West (Table 2) carried by truck (Tables 7 and 8) exceeded 2.6 billion in 1963. This means an annual savings of $14,312,000 may be calculated in the West on line-haul costs of the truck-born distribution portion of manufactured forest products transport. If the initial movement and all intermediate transfers were added, savings would be several times greater, especially since raw materials weigh more than finished goods. Of course, no attempt has been made to quantify the gains obtainable by increasing other truck combination dimensions. Nor has there been any investigation on the influence of lower costs in increasing the volume of truck traffic. A further advantage of using higher gross weight comes through reduction of the necessary number of freight vehicles on the roads. Fewer trucks means better utilization of the limited highway space. This is especially important to vehicle operators since the relative amounts of space (or space multiplied by time) occupied has been suggested as a possible means of allocating highway cost. It has been estimated that a 60,000 pound gross weight vehicle can move 10,000 ton-miles daily while one of 120,000 pounds moves 19,520 ton-miles. This means that 100 combinations of the lower weight can be replaced by only 52 combinations of 120,000 pounds, surely a significant difference! 21/ There is evidence in the forest products manufacturing field that additional length by itself offers substantial savings to operators. In November 1959 a major West coast paper manufacturer changed the length of truck combinations it operated to take allowance of revised state legislation signed into |