Around 440,000 freight vehicles use the road transport network across the UK. A substantial amount of those vehicles carry for the fresh produce industry, which depends on an efficient and reliable road network to deliver and collect perishable and delicate produce from grower to supplier to retailer. But road transport has a rocky path in front of it; after decades of neglect by former governments, change is needed.
Geoff Dossetter, head of external affairs for the Freight Transport Association (FTA), says: “The government makes £44 billion a year from road transport, and that includes £4bn from commercial vehicles. But it is putting less than £7bn back into improving the roads. This is an unhealthy figure by any standard and means that the road user is not getting a good deal.”
Lack of investment means further congestion, and therefore an increase in carbon emissions on the road. Regular congestion on popular trade routes, such as the M25, M1, M6 and M62, accumulate costs of more than £20bn a year and inevitably cause unreliability. “Better management of the roads is essential,” says Dossetter. “To the new government’s credit, it is beginning to put things in place, but we need more capacity in order to move goods and people across the country. We need to widen more motorways and still need to put more by-passes in place.”
But this view is not seen as environmentally friendly by many, and the public, as well as some in the fresh produce industry, disagree that digging up the countryside is the answer. Pangaean Ltd makes an average of 3,500 fresh produce deliveries by road a year from its chilled import/export facility at Manchester airport. “Road freight is the only realistic option for UK distribution from our facility,” says John Crofts, director of the company. “But disadvantages, such as weight damage to the infrastructure and vibration, noise and atmospheric pollution, should not be answered with continuous building of new roads and road widening.”
Fresh Direct is another company which believes road widening is not necessarily the way forward. A key supplier of fresh produce to the UK foodservice industry, Fresh Direct relies heavily on road transportation, which has an important role in the logistical operation of the company. “For us, it is the only viable option of getting the fresh produce to the end user in the correct time frame,” says Fresh Direct managing director Nigel Harris. “At the moment, any new developments in transportation infrastructure are not going to make a huge difference. Creating wider roads will not reduce the levels of congestion we see, but will only allow for increased volumes of traffic to hit the roads.”
But Dossetter reveals that less than two per cent of land in the UK is made up of roads. He insists that environmental issues are at the forefront for the FTA and the businesses it represents. The association has recently launched a new green campaigning website, www.sustainabledistribution.com, which deals with issues such as the carbon footprint and sustainability. “People are complaining about the amount of trucks on the road, but the level of trucks has been fairly static over the past couple of years,” says Dossetter. “Compared to the number of cars on the road, which has escalated over the past 30 years, the number of trucks has gone down. In 1967, there were 593,000 trucks and 8.9 million cars on the roads. In 2005, there were just 433,000 trucks, but the number of cars had risen to 26.2m. Trucks were famous for chucking out black smoke, but you just don’t see it anymore.”
Many think that a return to rail freight is the answer to both congestion and environmental problems. Andy Coleman, general manager at fresh produce distribution company Cargoflora Ltd, has to use road transport for the company’s deliveries, but would welcome an alternative. “Fresh produce has to be distributed in some way, and there isn’t any better way than the road,” he says. “The railways used to go straight into the towns and villages, but this has gradually been taken away. As an industry, we rely heavily on truck distribution and rail could do a lot more, but it’s the money that is the problem. The UK government has a very short-term attitude; it is all five-year plans and you don’t know what is going to happen next.”
This month the Department for Transport (DfT) published the White Paper, ‘Delivering a sustainable railway’, in which the government plans for a doubling of rail freight traffic by 2030 and commits itself to the development of a strategic freight network. There will be a budget of £200m for spending between now and 2014 on developing rail freight projects. But, while the FTA welcomes this decision, the association is keen to point out that £200m is less than two per cent of the £10bn that the government has committed to spend on enhancing capacity over the whole railway network in that period.
“The problem is that rail network is all about the passengers,” says Dossetter. “Rail freight has the ability to shift the congestion off the road network, but it needs to be more reliable.
“It is all very well saying that rail freight is better for the environment, but if it can’t offer a good price, efficiency and speed, then it isn’t worth it.”
Harris says Fresh Direct welcomes change, but will not stay static until it happens. “In the future we may see improved and more efficient train transport links to ship produce in from one depot to another,” he comments. “However, until then our main means of transportation is by road, which offers us the flexibility we need in order to deliver produce to our customers as and when it is needed.”
Fresh Direct is aware of the two major downsides to this particular way of transportation, but it attempts to compensate for this in other areas. “The company’s carbon footprint is a huge issue for us and we are constantly striving to become carbon-free,” Harris explains. “It is part of our policy to always source British produce wherever possible. In line with this, our new fleet of lorries have been procured under a low-carbon policy, running off Euro 4 - in accordance with the EU emission regulations - and any vehicles we purchase next year will all be of Euro 5 standard. With Euro 3 vehicles still being acceptable, Fresh Direct has chosen to make this environmentally prudent jump early.”
With its ‘carbon reducing calculator’ (CRC) in place, measuring the CO2 emissions of every vehicle run within every depot, Fresh Direct can continually assess its environmental performance and react to those journeys appearing high on the CRC ratings. Fresh Direct has also introduced supplier backhauls and dynamic routing so that it can plan journeys on a daily basis to ensure that it reduces stem mileage between customer drop offs.
The FTA recommends this kind of action. “The bottom line is that if companies take steps to decrease their carbon footprint, it will also cut their costs,” says Dossetter. “All of the environmentally friendly acts, such as improved technology offering more miles to the gallon, less journeys and better packing, also reduce operational costs.”
The FTA believes that supermarkets have been instrumental in making freight road transport more efficient. The days of trucks carrying only 50 per cent of their capacity are long gone, as well as vehicles travelling back empty from a delivery. Even though this happened primarily because of cost, the effect has helped reduce congestion and the environmental impact. “Supermarkets have made road transport more efficient over the years by discontinuing empty runs,” says Dossetter. “Distribution accounts for about 10-15 per cent of a supermarket’s expenditure and, when you consider the size of an annual turnover, transportation cost has a substantial impact on the bottom line. Supermarkets are fabulous leaders on making the industry smarter and more efficient.”
One solution in the pipeline is road pricing. The draft proposal of the Local Transport Bill in May this year outlined the reform of existing legislation relating to local road pricing schemes to ensure that, where local authorities wish to develop local schemes, they have the freedom and flexibility to do so in a way that best meets local needs. Following this announcement, Greater Manchester’s transport authority has confirmed that it intends to bid for government funding to introduce pay-as-you-go-style road pricing, and Bristol, Cambridgeshire and Durham are expected to follow suit.
Crofts agrees that road pricing is the only way forward. “It is inevitable that road pricing will be widespread in the future as the network becomes gridlocked to a point where domestic trade and movements are severely compromised,” he says.
Dossetter is in favour of the plans but sees conflict ahead. “Although it is good that road pricing can do something about congestion by spreading it out over a 24-hour cycle, motorists are extremely suspicious that the outcome will not benefit them,” he says. “On road pricing, the FTA policy is that we are in favour of it - as long as it provides a positive reduction in road congestion at an acceptable price. In other words, lorry operators would be willing to pay £5 on road pricing if they get £6 back in improved journey times, etc. If, however, they pay £5 and only get £4 of value, we would not be in favour.”
But Dossetter is still confident that the UK’s road transport system is one of the best in the world. “The UK is a world leader in logistics and its safety record is probably the best in Europe. Regulations are taken very seriously and it is a fact that lorries are actually safer on the road than cars,” he says. “But improvement has to come from the government. By the 21st century, we should have a reliable network and freight should be able to get to its destination efficiently. Economy and transport go hand in hand; the government should be doing something about it.”
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