Economics and Financing

This document contains two separate reports describing studies to develop initial estimates of four attributes of freight travel time costs (freight rate, travel time, on-time delivery, and loss or damage), expressed as a freight rate per pallet per hour, in the context of three generic consignment types (inter-capital full truck load, metropolitan or intra-city full truck load, and metropolitan or intra-city less than full truck load services), in Australian conditions. The two reports describe two surveys, a pilot in 1998 (Stage 1) and a more comprehensive survey in 2000 (Stage 2). Contextual stated preference techniques were used, with a total of 150 respondents and 449 completed responses. The first report demonstrated the feasibility of using the contextual stated preference technique approach. The reports contain the survey profoma and details of the analysis of the results. The econometric package LIMDEP was used for statistical analysis of the survey results. The larger scale of the second survey generally led to significantly more robust estimates of the travel time parameters than were realised in Stage 1. The 1998 pilot survey involved road freight shippers in the automotive parts, food and beverages, and selected building materials and packaging industries, whereas the 2000 larger survey specifically focussed on freight shippers in the automotive components industries sector. The critical early finding was that interviewers must be very familiar with the freight industry, and that great care in survey design, data collection and follow up are essential.