What is Partial Transport?

Partial transportation is a cost-effective transportation method which involves shipping different companies’ goods to the same destination point in the same container or vehicle. The main purpose here is to put different companies with the same destination point and without large enough cargo to take up the whole space in a container together. Such transportation method is commonly used in sea and railroad transportation and it has many benefits in road transport, as well.

Although it lowers the costs, unless the handling and distribution processes are operated accurately, there might be significant delays and losses. That is why the cargo is handled with LIFO (Last in First out) method which involves delivering the cargo loaded the last first and the loading process is based on destination.

Another important issue in project transport is handling the cargo according to its type and quality. Fragile cargo should be determined before the handling process so that it is not damaged during the transportation process. Moreover, the goods should be packaged and labelled properly in order to avoid any possible mistake or confusion.

Long distance and international transport are competitive businesses; as a result, service providers need to offer the best service for the lowest costs. Therefore, service providers have been developing fast, efficient and inexpensive systems of cargo integration that make use of economy scale. One of the most frequent problems that service providers face is the distribution of partial cargo that different clients request and are in various amount and sizes in one or more vehicles within the demanded time period. The main purpose here is to minimize the costs.

Service providers face this problem on daily basis and it is usually handled manually by operation unit personnel. Use of analytical methods in the problem- solving process is quite rare.