Transport Economics

What is transport means? Transport is the movement of people or goods for various personal and business reasons. Transport as a derived demand, people want transport because it enable them to do something, for example, business require goods transport in order to carry out activities within their supply chain( supply chain means is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer)
The mode of transport
1. Road-private car
2. Road-bus
3. Rail
4. Air
5. Ferries

Now let’s talk about the factors determine whether a manufacturer should use road or rail transport for distribution of its goods.
I think it depends on different manufacturer. for example for some industries, the road transport almost use van, but the capacity of those car is not enough for transport a lot of goods, so the supplier may need cost more to transport the goods again and again. Opposite, if manufacturer choose rail transport may will solve this problem, because the capacity of rail is quite big, therefore, it reduce the cost. However, sometimes, car transport can satisfy different places demand, but rail can not, because rail transport has specific destination, and road transport is more convenient, it can go to the place which rail transport can not arrive. In another hand, the risk of rail transport may worse than road, because use rail transport will meet some natural problem, like when they transport some goods very expensive and cause rail transport use the train, so the capacity of train is big, so they transport all the goods at once, but if they meet some natural problem like earthquake, they may lost all the goods, but if they use road transport, the natural problem will be better, people can avoid it. Thus I think it depends on different situation.