ABSTRACT
The economics of freight is an often overlooked and considerably under-researched area. One of the main reasons for this is that freight transport conforms far more to the principles of the free market than passenger transport. In simple terms, if a profit cannot be made from the sale of the goods in a different location because for example of high transport costs, the freight won’t go anywhere, and in fact will not even be produced in the first place. Even this book is a case in point of far less attention being paid to freight than passenger transport. The importance of freight transport however should not be understated. In purely financial terms, the carriage of freight and distribution services was estimated to be something in the order of £74.45bn in 2006 to the British economy (Keynote, 2007), which compares for example to some £3.7bn in passenger receipts from the bus industry or £6.6bn from passenger rail.
