"Does transportation cost too much?"

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton

Nope,, the product is worth no more when it's loaded onto the transport mode than when it's unloaded,, hence no value is added.
No such thing as indirect added value.

Well, Hugh, you're wrong. If transportation added no value then people wouldn't pay to ship things around, now would they?

It's called "time and place utility". No product is worth anything unless it's where the consumer can use it when the consumer wants/needs to use it.

Think of a banana. A banana is of absolutely no value to me or you on the banana plantation in the Honduras. We can't eat it if it's in the Honduras. To be of any value to us it has to be transported to a grocery store where we can get it.

It has to be moved to an accessable point. That certainly adds value to the banana. Which is why Chiquita and Dole have those banana boats. You don't think they'd spend the money on the boats if the boats weren't adding value, do you?

[chad thomas]

I agree with Ed. If you had a widget factory in town x then without transportation town x would be saturated with cheap widgets. Transporting those widgets to town Y that doesn't have a widget factory makes the product more valuable (added value). The question is- is the value added more then the cost of transportation.

[MP173]

Hugh, I disagree.

The transportation does add value. It enables the product to maximize it's revenue at the location it is consumed. Transportation gets it there.

Another point...look at the value added by air transportation. Next day and second day deliveries have become a huge market, based on the reduction of inventories.

ed

[Hugh Jampton]

Nope,, the product is worth no more when it's loaded onto the transport mode than when it's unloaded,, hence no value is added.
No such thing as indirect added value.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton

Transportation doesn't add value, and anything that doesn't add value costs too much, even if it's cheap.

If transportation doesn't add value, then perhaps I should stick to drinking American-grown coffee and buying Fords built at the Torrence Avenue plant in my old neighborhood. Transportation adds value indirectly, it allows a product to be sold where it is demanded, even if the demand is halfway across the country.

[Hugh Jampton]

Transportation doesn't add value, and anything that doesn't add value costs too much, even if it's cheap.

[Anonymous]

I actually think Transport pays too little.

[kursinsky]

It doesn't matter the mode. Customers will always complain about shipping cost.

[Anonymous]

In the early 60's there was a Chicago television program entitled, "Does Transportation Cost Too Much?", which featured a panel discussion that included a railroad president, the VP of Quaker Oats, and the NY Herald Tribune business editor. (Source: trade magazine from 1963.)

"Transportation costs too much" was a complaint of rail shippers in the 1960's; it was a complaint of rail shippers 100 years ago; and It is a complaint of rail shippers today.

No doubt as long as there are railroads, it will be the perennial complaint of the rail customer.