Transportation industry is one of the largest industries in the world. It varies from aero planes, ships, buses, cars, automobiles, pipelines and even ware houses.
During 2009, the U.S transportation industries had total revenues of about $1.6 trillion. Transportation plays a vital role in each and every sector of the economy. Globally on a whole transportation sector has a lot of pressure since the mid of 2007.Initially the fuel costs has been increased. Global recession has diminished the traffic of the all the types of transportation. The sink in the business has been felt by all the firms within the transportation sector. The global financial crisis created various problems in the transportation industry. Suppose during March 2009, the container ships throughout the world which were kept idle were estimated to be 453 vessels which are very high.
In March 2010 FedEx announced that its global revenues has been increased by 7% which is led by the growth in Asia and again U.S revenues has been increased up by 1%.FedEx and Competitor UPS are the leading indicators of the transportation industry. Globalization placed a role in increasing the transportation and supply chain management. United Parcel Service (UPS) delivers to more than 200 nations world wide and the International revenues are keys for its growth of about $45 billion in 2009 revenues.
Transportation continues to be increasing whether it may be sea, road or rail. For example the length of the express ways is about 200 kilometers in 1989 for China. But the length as of now is about 50,000 kilometers which is the second largest in the world.
The use of the information technology with sophisticated technologies can track shipments via the internet and has created a lot of transport and logistic efficiencies. Supply chain technology is one of the fastest growing segments in the global industry.
The adoption of outsourcing has lead many companies to the change towards the logistics services for all the manners of shipping support including warehousing, distributing and scheduling. The three sectors like supply chain management; logistics and transportation are combined and are used for creating more efficiency in transportation.
All the nations in the world are facing very discouraged results in maintaining e-commerce and passenger traffic efficiently. The amount of government funding is not meeting the long term needs. For example, researches at the Texas A&M University’s Texas transportation institute estimate that the cost for the delay purposes of the traffic of U.S. Economy is about $87.2 billion in 2007 itself.
One of the major requirements for the global transportation sector is to focus on lowering the carbon emissions and improving the energy efficiency. In U.S, the transportation sector is estimated to create 32% of all carbon dioxide emissions. Large orders have been placed for fuel efficient jets like Boeing’s new 787 which increase the efficiency gains of 15 to 20% of the passengers per mile. Container ships are under huge pressure of reducing the contamination and emission while at port as well as at the sea. Automobiles and truck drivers are striving hard for the fuel efficient vehicles.
Consumers and the government organizations are showing interest in high speed trains and the other forms of transport. Trains are being used rapidly even the number of consumers who are using buses has been increased for commuting to their places leaving cars at home.
Another big change is increasing interest of government in outsourcing the transportation infrastructure to private ownership and operators. Because of shortage of cash in government they are selling or leasing the bridges and high ways to the private operators who build new bridges and high ways relieving the government from huge investment costs and creating own profits.
Government economic stimulus plans from U.S to Europe to China had promised to increase the investment for the construction of bridges, highways etc. for example in U.S the February 2009 The American Recovery and Reinvestment act provided funds for different modes of transport like $8.4 billion for public transit projects, $8 billion for high speed train, $1.3 billion for Amtrak updates and $27.5 billion for highway infrastructure and even $1.1 billion for new airport grants. The fact is that the funding will be distributed to 50 states which will limit its impact on any form of transportation.
In the same way Chinese government unveiled $586 billion to different ways of transport by economic stimulus package on November 2008.
So, these are different trends in transportation industry by Plunkett Research, Ltd.