Role of Intermodal Connectors with Freight Movement, Analysis and Infrastructure - Essay Example

8). The peak of the problem arose when it became abundantly clear to the industry observers that the traditional “break bulk” shipping will not be able to carry around the world the increasing cargo while performing their duties of safe delivery of the cargo. This therefore led to the palletization and containerization as a means to resolve the problems. At the same time, a revolution took place whereby, there was the increasing need for the use of bigger ships as it was realised that this could lead to a great reduction of shipping costs since industries increasingly preferred using ships than to the old rail and road methods.

From 1945 to 1995, oil tankers increased by size of almost twenty times while dry bulk vessels became almost some fifteen times bigger. With this increase in ship sizes, the industry benefited from a great advantage due to reduction in cost to carry around their raw materials (e.g. this led to the cost of transporting coal by sea from Virginia to Jacksonville, Florida almost three times cheaper than by rail) (Chrzanowski, 1985). Intermodal freight or intermodal connectors can be defined as the shipment of goods involving two or more modes of transportation (sea, air, rail, road) from origin to destination under a single contract of carriage (bill of lading).

1 Due to the increase production processes around the world and the need to effectively move the goods around the world, logistics cannot be complete without a good communication method from the manufacturers to the consumers. In this case therefore, logistic systems must be able to rapidly adjust to changing and increasing levels of demand and inventory at each stage of production and distribution around the globe to the final consumer with minimal defects. This can only be achieved with good intermodal connectors.

Intermodal connectors that consist of roads,