In today’s world, moving freight on roads is the most common way to move goods across the country. It is also the only transport mode that can reach into the most rural areas and deliver your goods right at the doorstep.
So, who should try road freight when moving goods? How important is road if you look at the whole logistics chain? And what are the benefits for the customer when choosing road freight as a transportation alternative? We interviewed Ari Mavela, Head of Road Freight Greencarrier Freight Services, and Julia Rahula, Managing Director for Greencarrier Estonia, to find the answers.
Greencarrier Freight Services is a logistics provider, offering flexible and sustainable solutions. What is your view on the freight forwarding role now and in the future?
Julia Rahula: Freight forwarding is about knowledge and experience that has been built by years. The foundation is to offer the best options to customers, meanwhile taking all factors into consideration. And these I believe will stay in future. It’s also becoming increasingly obvious that large logistics providers have a responsibility to be leaders in the development of sustainable logistics.
Ari Malvela: Freight forwarding is serving customers with multiple options available in the market. The availability of those options is increasing, so freight forwarding is and will be playing an essential part of solving present and future challenges, which customers have in their logistics chain every day.
If you look at the whole logistics chain – how important is road as a transportation mode?
Julia Rahula: Road transportation is playing a vital role for shippers and consignees located on short distance from each other, a good example is Finnish and Estonian customers. Road transportation is also complimentary part for long hauls shipments by air, ocean and rail. You can’t make a door-to-door delivery without involving road.
Ari Malvela: Road is playing a key role in Finland-Baltic area traffic due to short distance. The traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn is the most occupied traffic in Finland from port to port and is expected to keep growing in the future.
What are the benefits for the customer when moving goods by road freight?
Julia Rahula: An important benefit is for sure the time aspect. For time sensitive deliveries within short distance, road transportation sometimes is the only option. Road freight provides great flexibility. Routes as well as timings can easily be adjusted to your individual requirements.
Ari Malvela: One of the largest advantages of road freight is that your goods can be moved from door to door; from manufacturer to distributor or from city to town. Only with road freight is it possible to reach into the most rural areas and deliver the goods directly to the door. Road freight is also cost-efficient and quick when transporting goods over short distances. As the goods can be loaded directly into the vehicles and transported directly to the destination, the risk for delays in the transport chain is minimised, and the need for reloading the goods eliminated.
Sustainability focus is more important than ever. How sustainable is road as transport mode?
Julia Rahula: Road transportation has developed a lot during the last years. It is not only high demand of usage biofuels, more focus is also put on efficiency of the routes and its combination with more environmentally friendly solutions, for example like ferries and short sea.
Ari Malvela: Naturally, short sea is a more environmentally friendly solution in longer distances, but road is playing a key role and will in the future still be overall in Europe. Road is fast and reliable. Constant technical development of euro class engines is leading to less consumption of diesel. Also, development of different biofuels is taking road step by step towards a greener tomorrow. On top of this, the first fully electric powered trucks are entering the market.
A couple of months ago, Greencarrier Freight Services purchased a top player in Finland-to-Baltics Road transport. Tell us more?
Ari Malvela: Yes, through this acquisition we have doubled our size in especially the Estonian-Finnish market, and we are among the top players in the tradeline.
Julia Rahula: The acquisition gave us new and talented colleagues, great partners, tools and potential to grow faster than the market, and the opportunity to grow as a company. With this acquisition, we hope and think that we can more often exceed our customers’ expectations.
What has this acquisition meant for Greencarrier Freight Services?
Ari Malvela: This market is very much volume driven, meaning you need to have a certain size of the traffic in order to be competitive and meet the market conditions. Together with joined forces, we now have a large part of the traffic and can help our customers even better.
Julia Rahula: As Ari mentioned, we have increased in size and now we can now offer even more options, departures, and higher frequency of transportation to both existing and new customers.
What are your thoughts on road freight and the future? Share in the comments! And if you need any help with your freight, contact us here and we are happy to help.
