When you are operating a business where you need to deliver products to customers, you need to think about the transport method that can be used to ensure safe transference. The type of transportation method you choose will depend on your requirements and the nature of the product.
You need to consider whether you are transporting perishable or non-perishable products. For transporting perishable items, you will need specialised vehicles such as refrigerated vans and trucks. And if you are looking at interstate transport you need to think about which transport method will keep the costs low all the while maintaining the quality of the products. Product availability will also determine the transport method along with where you are sourcing the supply. Other considerations are the volume you will be transporting at one time along with regulations such as customs rules, duty, taxes, quarantine regulations etc. The main types of transport that you will come across are air, water and land. Land transportation can be on roads and railways. Different transportation methods will vary according to budget, speed required for the delivery, and the nature of delivery and goods. Sometimes you will need to choose a transportation method over another depending on the nature of geography you need to traverse to deliver goods.
Cost is a big factor when choosing the method of transport.
This will depend on the amount of goods you want to transport and the type or nature of goods. Cost of goods and cost of transportation will have a link. The weight of the goods will also play a role in determining the mode of transportation. For example, if you want to transport heavy or bulky goods while keeping the cost of transportation low, you can consider rail transport. For smaller quantities, you can use trucks and other means of road transport as you can remove some of the handling costs. But you also need to understand that you may be able to offer timely delivery with rail transport as it will not be affected by traffic or road rules. If you are looking for cheaper ways to transport products, water transport is a good option. But this will come with a long delivery time. However, this is very economical when you are transporting bulky items across long distances. But because of the long duration of time required, you cannot use this for shipping perishable goods.
If your product line has perishable or fragile goods and you need to transport it over long distances, a good option is air freight. However, this comes at a high cost so you need to consider if the cost of goods warrants a high transportation price. If you are shipping high value goods, this will be the safest way. And reliability also differs when it comes to transportation. Weather conditions will affect all modes of transportation equally but when it comes to water transportation, storms can be an additional risk that you need to consider. Ocean transport tends to be risker because of this and the long duration also adds to the risk. To mitigate some of this, you can invest in special packaging.
