The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India is moving trucks on rail to transport goods such as milk from Gujarat. Is it a win-win situation for both road and rail networks?
Image credit: Indian Railways
This is not a very common sight in India – trucks moving on trains. And the potential of this method in reducing logistics costs is yet to be unlocked.
The Dedicated Freight Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) is attempting to do just that. As part of its new service, the wholly owned enterprise of the rail ministry is carrying trucks on railway rakes on the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor. The truck-on-train service is popularly known as RORO or roll-on/roll-off service.
DFCCIL is currently running the RORO service on a stretch between New Rewari in Haryana and New Palanpur in Gujarat, potentially eyeing business from leading milk producers in Gujarat who send hundreds of trucks from the state to the national capital region (NCR) every day. For example, Amul sends about 200 to 250 trucks via road from Gujarat to Delhi every single day.
But why should one move trucks on trains when you have roads?
Before we get there, here’s how the service functions.
Loaded/unloaded trucks move up a ramp onto rail wagons, forming a rake which is hauled to the destination. Prior to moving into the wagons, trucks are weighed and passed under a height gauge to make sure they meet the guidelines. Once the train reaches the destination, trucks can roll off, and move to the end point. In short, while the truck takes care of the first mile and last mile of goods movement, the train takes care of the rest.
DFCCIL was set up in 2006 for the construction, maintenance, and operation of dedicated freight corridors (DFCs). The core idea behind DFCs was to move freight trains from the over-congested Indian Railways’ network, which runs both passenger and freight trains, leading to slow speed of freight trains. The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) are among the largest projects undertaken by the Indian Railways at an expenditure of about INR1.25 lakh crore. While the EDFC is currently operational between Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Son Nagar in Bihar, the WDFC is operational between Dadri to Sanand in Gujarat.
RORO’s pull factor
“You can’t eliminate trucks on the road by the virtue of their design, their advantages or by virtue of the size of the consignments they carry. So why not collaborate? We let the trucks come to us. It is cheaper to send goods via trucks on rail than by road,” says Srinivas Nanduri, former director-operations and business development at DFCCIL.
Pull factor # 1: Cost - DFCCIL last year signed an MoU with
Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, which owns Amul, to send 25 trucks via the RoRo service from New Palanpur, Gujarat to New Rewari in Haryana. Moving a truck on this stretch, which is approximately 640 kilometres, costs around INR32,000. DFCCIL is trying to attract this traffic to rail by pricing the service at INR28,000. Truck operators can save on multiple expenses such as toll charges, truck maintenance, driver expenses, and, most importantly, diesel.
Pricing is the most important criteria to pull trucks on to rail, if the success of the RORO service on Konkan Railways is to learn from. We will tell you more about the Konkan Railways experience in a wee bit.
To be sure, the RORO concept was adopted by the Indian Railways around 2016 but has been of little success largely because of high rail tariffs. DFCCIL, too, tried to start this service from Rewari to Palanpur in 2021. However, it did not find takers since tariffs for RORO service were higher than road.
Last year, in a circular, the Railway Board permitted special concession on pricing of the RORO service on the New Rewari to New Palanpur stretch of the DFC as per tonnage. So, for loaded trucks,charges in effect are — 0-45 tonnes: INR29,000 and 45-58 tonnes: INR32,000. On the other hand, empty trucks will be charged at INR21,800 per wagon.
According to DFCCIL, these rates are competitive vis-à-vis road transit costs.
“We are demanding if the railways can come out with similar liberalised pricing mechanism across the DFC network so the traffic on rail can take a quantum jump,” says Nanduri.
Pull factor #2: Time -The DFCs are designed to carry only freight trains. So, they are much faster not only compared to the Indian Railway network but also the road. For the New Rewari-New Palanpur stretch, a truck can cover the distance in about 16 hours, against 22-24 hours taken by road.
At present, there are two rakes running on this route, each carrying 30 wagons each way. Of these, 25 wagons are dedicated to Amul as part of the MoU. The remaining five wagons are open to be booked by other companies.
Some RORO lessons from Konkan Railways
The RORO service was first launched in India by the Konkan Railway on January 26, 1999. Konkan Railway is one of the 19 railway zones in India with a stretch of about 740 kilometres of railway network running though the Western Ghats and the coastal regions of Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka. Initially the service was launched between Kolad (Maharashtra) and Verna (Goa) largely to absorb extra capacity on the network and tap into the road market since a large number of trucks move along the difficult terrain of the Western Ghats. It has been a consistent service ever since, contributing to about 10% to 12% of the total originating freight revenue of the Konkan Railway per annum.
At present, Konkan Railway runs one rake each side every alternate day, each carrying up to 50 trucks at a time from Kolad, Maharashtra to Surathkal, Karnataka. An interesting mix of companies use this service for goods ranging from rubber products, fish powder, plywood, tiles, general merchandise, packaging material, etc.
“For Point A to Point B movement, if a trucker spends X amount and rail charges are X plus Y, there is no one you can convince to move to rail,” says an industry insider. But Konkan Railways’ pricing matches well with the expenditure truck operators are incurring on road. Rates are adjusted dynamically to changes in diesel rates which is the biggest cost in truck operations.
Also, Konkan Railways allows even a single truck to be booked for the service, rather than operators having to book the entire rake. This has been a key factor in attracting small truckers with one or two trucks. There are fixed charges for load up to 15 tonnes, beyond which there are additional per-tonne charges. Truck drivers are allowed to travel in the truck with a second-class journey ticket.
A win-win situation despite challenges
Despite being a time and money saver, rail has its own challenges.
The biggest reason why companies do not prefer rail over road is that unlike road, rail does not offer end-to-end connectivity. So, if a customer chooses railways, goods have to be loaded onto a truck which is then taken to a rail terminal. Here, goods have to be unloaded from the truck, and re-loaded onto the rail wagon. When the train reaches the end destination, again they have to be loaded onto a truck and moved to the final destination. Besides waiting time, loading and unloading at multiple points is a cumbersome task and comes at an extra cost.
Also, not all companies have the huge volumes of load to fulfil the railways’ criteria of moving goods which is up to 1,000 tonnes. Aggregation of load from multiple parties is something that has not taken off and is a time-taking exercise. “There are so many SMEs across multiple industries who produce just 10 tonnes to 20 tonnes a day. These will have to wait for accumulation of load from other parties if it has to go by rail,” says Nanduri at DFCCIL. Hence sending cargo by trucks via road is a much simpler and quicker way to transport for most companies.
Some industry quarters believe that the RoRo service is not a very efficient service in terms of total weight-carrying capacity per rake. For instance, wagons are designed to carry 50 to 68 tonnes of goods. Trucks mostly carry 10 to 18 tonnes of goods. So, this means, if a train carries one truck per wagon, it is carrying less weight than its capacity.
However, the truck-train combination is a win-win for all stakeholders. While it may help meet capacity utlisation goals for the railways, for truckers, it saves transit time and costs on fuel, drivers, toll charges, etc.
The road ahead
DFCs today are in a much better position to replicate the success of the RORO service which was pioneered by Konkan Railway 25 years back. First, the DFC network, as opposed to the congested Indian Railways network, has ample spare capacity to provide this facility. At present, the DFC network is very much underutilised. “For DFCs, the line capacity is to run 120 trains per day. However, on EDFC, we are touching 70-75 trains a day. But on WDFC, we are only touching 40 to 45 trains a day,” informs Nanduri.
Also, the DFC network is designed to carry much higher volumes of cargo than normal tracks and is capable of running longer trains on tracks that run parallel to high-traffic road corridors of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata. One of the challenges with RORO has been the restriction on carrying bigger trucks due to the low height of overhead electrical wires. However, the same is not a constraint for DFC since it has higher overhead electrical wires.
Nanduri believes there is enough demand on both WDFC and EDFC and the service can be scaled throughout the length of the DFC network. However, DFCCIL would need to expand its capacity if demand increases for RORO. The service needs flat wagons as opposed to box-like wagons used for other commodities. Since these wagons are not much in demand, manufacturing of these wagons is minimal. The railways have planned to procure about 1,000 wagons for the RORO service.
(Graphics by Manali Ghosh)
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/prime/economy-and-policy/trucks-taking-trains-this-is-how-amul-milk-is-reaching-you-faster-cheaper/primearticleshow/109541460.cms
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