5 ms·

It is incredibly interesting to me, yeah. I’m not going to lie, I have 25 pages of a book sitting around in my Google Drive, but I quickly realized two things:

It is incredibly interesting to me, yeah. I’m not going to lie, I have 25 pages of a book sitting around in my Google Drive, but I quickly realized two things: 1) this will be the most boring book in existence, and requires a much better writer than me to make for an interesting read. And 2) lots of my knowledge is specific to the European situation, which can sometimes be wildly different. The shipping industry can be surprisingly locally focused. But I might draw out a few diagrams and write a blog post some day :)

superice 5y ago
Actually, I had this write-up lying around which I wrote for somebody involved in building a container terminal simulation game: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQYtBzhkogHUvn2zDlLVMADuBkaPUEEmQXJ0XA8cC0McuZuNQEzsj33fFWAmf1fpnkq2luyWZ3wQcil/pub https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQYtBzhkogHUvn2z... It's pretty specific to terminals, but it's a decent introduction.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  I noticed on your section on inland terminals that there's no mention of rail-based terminals, which is interesting because that is the dominant form of inland terminal I think about. Are they rare in Europe (or, equivalently, are they unusually common in the US), or is this just something that you're not familiar with?
  - superice 5y ago
    Yes, this is definitely my personal experience shining through: my primary experience is with inland terminals which predominantly handle barges. In the Rhine-delta (the Rotterdam/Antwerp hinterland) this is much more common than rail terminals, although trimodal (barge/rail/truck) are on the rise. Most hinterlands however don't have fine mazed rivers and canals suitable for water transport like The Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium have, so in other areas of the world (notably the US) rail-based inland terminals are a lot more common. But inland terminals are an entirely different beast from sea terminals due to the scaling I mentioned. Area scales quadratically, but quay side or rail length scales linearly. This means larger sea terminals have lots of trouble managing an efficient flow of containers onto and from the ships. Inland terminals, both barge and rail, are often not constrained by this in and out flow, but have more natural constraints like the total amount of containerizable goods transported in the geographic area they serve. The biggest difference is probably what parts of the transport inland terminals are responsible for. In The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany I've noticed that often inland terminals act as hinterland operators, also taking responsibility for the barge or train leg, and usually also last mile trucking to the customer. Sea side terminals tend to not do this nearly as much. So TL;DR: yes, rail is the dominant form basically everywhere except the area where I happen to live and work. But no, both rail and barge inland terminals are very similar in many respects, but are quite different from sea side terminal operations. EDIT: Actually, just to clarify, I have a lot more experience with inland terminals than sea side terminals. But because the typical container terminal problems (berthing, stacking, equipment assignment etc.) are so much less of an issue with the smaller scale of inland terminals, they only get a very short mention in my document. There really is no berthing problem if you handle 2 barges a week, there is no equipment assignment problem if you have a single crane and a single reachstacker, and there is no real stacking problem if you can ask a trucker to walk around and spot their assigned box between the ~300 boxes you currently have. Typically the biggest issue for inland terminal operations is the transport planning from and to the sea side terminals, and that is similar for both barge and rail terminals.
- nullstyle 5y ago
  Super interesting. Thank you for this link and your posts above!
- mdorazio 5y ago
  Thank you for posting this - it's exactly the level of explanation I was looking for. And if you want to write a book with lots of factual information that isn't completely boring, you might want to try doing it in the style of Cadillac Desert which explains California's water management system by following the history of the people and organizations that built it.

superice 5y ago

Actually, I had this write-up lying around which I wrote for somebody involved in building a container terminal simulation game: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQYtBzhkogHUvn2zDlLVMADuBkaPUEEmQXJ0XA8cC0McuZuNQEzsj33fFWAmf1fpnkq2luyWZ3wQcil/pub https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQYtBzhkogHUvn2z... It's pretty specific to terminals, but it's a decent introduction.

jcranmer 5y ago
I noticed on your section on inland terminals that there's no mention of rail-based terminals, which is interesting because that is the dominant form of inland terminal I think about. Are they rare in Europe (or, equivalently, are they unusually common in the US), or is this just something that you're not familiar with?
- superice 5y ago
  Yes, this is definitely my personal experience shining through: my primary experience is with inland terminals which predominantly handle barges. In the Rhine-delta (the Rotterdam/Antwerp hinterland) this is much more common than rail terminals, although trimodal (barge/rail/truck) are on the rise. Most hinterlands however don't have fine mazed rivers and canals suitable for water transport like The Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium have, so in other areas of the world (notably the US) rail-based inland terminals are a lot more common. But inland terminals are an entirely different beast from sea terminals due to the scaling I mentioned. Area scales quadratically, but quay side or rail length scales linearly. This means larger sea terminals have lots of trouble managing an efficient flow of containers onto and from the ships. Inland terminals, both barge and rail, are often not constrained by this in and out flow, but have more natural constraints like the total amount of containerizable goods transported in the geographic area they serve. The biggest difference is probably what parts of the transport inland terminals are responsible for. In The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany I've noticed that often inland terminals act as hinterland operators, also taking responsibility for the barge or train leg, and usually also last mile trucking to the customer. Sea side terminals tend to not do this nearly as much. So TL;DR: yes, rail is the dominant form basically everywhere except the area where I happen to live and work. But no, both rail and barge inland terminals are very similar in many respects, but are quite different from sea side terminal operations. EDIT: Actually, just to clarify, I have a lot more experience with inland terminals than sea side terminals. But because the typical container terminal problems (berthing, stacking, equipment assignment etc.) are so much less of an issue with the smaller scale of inland terminals, they only get a very short mention in my document. There really is no berthing problem if you handle 2 barges a week, there is no equipment assignment problem if you have a single crane and a single reachstacker, and there is no real stacking problem if you can ask a trucker to walk around and spot their assigned box between the ~300 boxes you currently have. Typically the biggest issue for inland terminal operations is the transport planning from and to the sea side terminals, and that is similar for both barge and rail terminals.
nullstyle 5y ago
Super interesting. Thank you for this link and your posts above!
mdorazio 5y ago
Thank you for posting this - it's exactly the level of explanation I was looking for. And if you want to write a book with lots of factual information that isn't completely boring, you might want to try doing it in the style of Cadillac Desert which explains California's water management system by following the history of the people and organizations that built it.