Aviva Directory » Business & Industry » Transportation & Logistics

The transportation and logistics industry is made up of six sectors: road, rail, air, water, warehousing, and storage.

These industries are further broken down into sub-industries and infrastructure: air freight and logistics, airlines, marine, railroads, trucking, airport services, highways, rail lines, and marine ports and services.

Transportation infrastructure includes fixed installations (roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and pipelines), as well as terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots, and seaports). The means of transport on land may include automobiles, trucks, bicycles, wagons, carriages, rickshaws, riding animals, pack animals, and trains. On the water, various types of ships provide the means of transport. Drones, airplanes, helicopters, and other types of aircraft are the means of transport by air. In space, of course, there are spacecraft. Oil and other resources are often transported by pipeline.

Maritime transport is a reference to the transport of people or goods by water. Freight transport by sea has been used throughout recorded human history and, although aviation has greatly decreased the significance of sea travel for passengers, it remains popular for short trips or pleasure cruises. While transport by water is generally less expensive than air or ground transport, it is notably slower for long-distance trips or transports. Thus, maritime transport of cargo remains an important part of the economy, accounting for about eighty percent of international trade. Maritime transport over canals, rivers, lakes, and oceans uses boats, sailboats, ships, or barges.

The railroad industry transports passengers and goods along wheeled vehicles, known as trains, that run on tracks. In the United States, most railways now carry freight only, although Amtrak serves a large portion of the country, supplemented by scattered excursion trains, many of which connect only a few cities. However, subway trains remain active in many of the larger cities in the United States, while high-speed rail transport of passengers is used widely in some countries, such as China, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and several European countries.

Both passenger and cargo air transport have grown immensely over the years. While expensive, air freight is typically the fastest mode of transport over long distances.

Road transport is divided between the transport of people and the transportation of goods. The nature of road transportation differs greatly around the world, as it is heavily dependent upon the local infrastructure and the nature of the land area being crossed.

For short runs, the transport of goods might be by van or pickup truck for small volumes over short distances, while larger trucks will be used for larger loads over longer distances. However, in some countries, cargo is transported by horse-drawn carriages, donkey carts, or other non-motorized means. Bike couriers are commonly used for the delivery of documents and small packages in larger cities.

Roads are thoroughfares, routes, or paths on land between two places that have been surfaced or otherwise improved to allow for travel by foot or conveyance, such as a horse, bicycle, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads are known by a large variety of names, some of them being regional terms, while others serve to differentiate between various types o roadways. These might include agricultural roads, alleys, arterial roads, avenues, backroads, beltways, bicycle lanes, boulevards, brick roads, byways, carriageways, causeways, circles, collector roads, connectors, courts, cul-de-sacs, dirt roads, expressways, farm-to-market roads, forest roads, freeways, frontage roads, gravel roads, highways, historic roads, ice roads, interchanges, intersections, interstate highways, lanes, limited-access highways, loops, military roads, motorways, one-way streets, parkways, paths, places, plazas, roads, roundabouts, routes, side roads, streets, superhighways, terraces, trunk roads, turnpikes, and ways, as well as their equivalents in various countries and languages.

Roads can also be classified according to the pavement material used, such as asphalt roads, concrete roads, dirt roads, earthen roads, and gravel roads.

Logistics refers to the supply chain management dealing with the flow of goods from the originating point to the destination. For example, logistics is highly important in the trucking and delivery industries, as it involves the movement of products or materials from one facility to another. For example, when a customer places multiple orders with Amazon, the company will usually ship more than one order in the same container. Similarly, when UPS has multiple items going to the same customer or area, they will endeavor to send them on one truck rather than dispatching several trucks to the same location.

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