RESEARCH PROPOSAL

An Investigation on the Impact of Vehicle Selection for Road freight Transport Operations

An Investigation on the Impact of Vehicle Selection for Road freight Transport Operations

Introduction

Freight transport operations consist of people, systems and equipments. The basic purpose of freight transportation is to dispatch different types and nature of goods from one place to another via various modes of transportation. Generally, there are three modes of transportation; this includes road transportation, air deliveries and water transportation. The most common form of freight transportation is the dispatch of goods over land. The transportation of goods over land can be executed either through road trucks or rail freight transport. The road trucks are often used by companies to pick up, transport, and deliver the goods to a certain destination. The contract of carriage is essential to the movement of goods and it can be defined as the agreement under which a claimant is committed to moving the merchandise that has been entrusted, by paying a price, and this price is due to the carrier by the shipper, who is described as freight.

This mode of transportation can be used by the companies to deliver both the raw materials as well as finished goods. In this paper, we will focus our attention specifically to Road freight Transport Operations and would investigate the Impact of Vehicle Selection on Road freight Transport Operations.

Background to Project and reasons for choice

The core purpose of this study is to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring some relevant information relating to the analysis of the impact of vehicle selection on the freight transport. The choice of this area for conducting the research is associated with researcher's experience in the field of road freight transportation. The researcher has more than six years' experience in lorry driving, who suspects that transport operators might fear prosecution from the authorities if overloading 44 tonne articulated Lorries, which is a fact. A typical standard 44 tonne articulated lorry in U.K is described by Thelancet.com (2012) as a combination of a tractor unit and a semi-trailer with measurements and features as shown below:

Adopted from; Thelancet.com (2012)

The researcher feels that these Lorries are like oversized football shoes of which they may not be fully utilised by weight and capacity. The research would be confined on the County of Yorkshire. This study will help the researcher to analyze and examine some important aspects of vehicle selection i.e. its size and weight, and propose solutions to mitigate the fear of overloading. The study would probably help the researcher as well as other entities to know about the most appropriate size and measurement of vehicle that should be adapted for the most efficient freight transportation.

Hypothesis

The primary purpose of hypothesis development is to speculate upon the outcome of a research or experiment. In this study, the researcher tries to explore the trepidation among transport operators leading to under-utilisation of road freight transport operations. Following is the list of queries that researcher desires to investigate:

Are these 44 tonne articulated ...