7.2.1 Distance travelled: One of the facts pointed out in numerous reports on the efficiency of the Indian trucking services is that a truck in this country covers a distance of just around 70,000 km per year or about 250 km per day against nearly 150 to 200,000 km in advanced countries. Data collected from the Drivers’ survey indicated that the average distance covered by the vehicles in a year was 85729 km or about 7 thousand kilometres per month for all types of vehicles of all ages taken together, thus corroborating the oft quoted phenomenon as far as comparison with other countries is concerned, but showing some improvement. The average distance covered was 88,800 km for vehicles in the age group less than 6 years, about 85,000 for those in the age group 6 to 9 years, about 82,000 for those aged 10 to 14 years and 78,000 for all older vehicles (Table 7.5). The fall in the distance covered with age of the vehicle does not appear to be very steep. It must be remembered in this connection that these performances do not represent the vehicles’
current level of performance but only the cumulative performance over the entire period since the vehicle came out on the road. The current performances of vehicles in different age brackets would obviously be still lower.
7.2.2
Table 7.5: Average Distance Covered by Trucks per Year by Age of Vehicle Age Group % distribution of
vehicles by age
Avg Age of vehicle in the age group
Average total distance covered per
year
Less then 6 years 30.9 5.75 88812
6 - 9 44.4 8.6 85462
10-14 22.6 12.6 82697
15-19 2.1 16.54 78571
All India 100.0 8.79 85730
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7.3.3 Time-disposition of vehicles: While making a comparison of the distance covered by the trucks in India with that elsewhere, the differences in road and traffic conditions and halts en route that are not within the control of the vehicle owner or driver need to be taken into account. The present study attempted to collect information on the disposition of the total trip time into actual running time and time spent on various other activities. The results are summarised in Table 7.6.
Table 7.6: Disposition of Trip Time by Activities
Time spent (Hrs) on the different activities in trips of distance
Activity
100 to 499 500 to 999 1000 or more
All distances
Check posts 2.87 8.14 17.55 9.28
Other official stoppages 1.38 4.81 8.11 4.57
Repairs en route 2.01 3.09 4.63 2.95
Fuelling en route 1.26 2.73 6.78 3.44
Rest and meals 2.38 7.2 14.36 7.81
Traffic hurdles 3.77 5.17 8.67 5.59
Other halts 0.68 1.33 2.71 1.56
Running time 7 18.65 47.58 23.7
Total average trip time (hrs.) 21.34 51.12 110.4 59
% of running time to trip time 33 36 43 40
7.3.4 Turn-around time: The turn-around time, i.e. the total round trip time varies from about 21 hours for a trip of 100 km to 499 km to about 50 hours for a trip of 500 to 999 km and 110 hours for a trip of over 1000 km (Table 7.6). The actual running times for the same distances were found to be accounting for 33 %, 36% and 43% of the total trip times, with an overall running time of 40%. It should be our endeavour to increase this ratio in order to improve the productivity of the Goods Transport Vehicles.
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7.3.5 Time loss due to inter-State barriers and other reasons: From Table 7.6 it may be observed that out of the total trip time, the percentage of time lost due to check-posts and other official stoppages accounted for 16 % and 8 % respectively when all types of distances are taken into consideration. However, these percentages were seen to go down with increasing distances. Thus, these delays together contribute a loss of about 24 % of the total trip time. Consequently the haulage would go up by this extent if these halts were eliminated.
7.3.6 Overloading: A common observation about the trucking operations in India is that most of the trucks carry freight in excess of the vehicles’ authorised tonnage. Currently, a standard 9 tonne truck is authorised to carry an axle load up to 10.2 tonnes. However, the actual load carried is observed to be much in excess and sometimes even double the authorised level. It is said that the consignors and the transport operators who engage the vehicles from vehicle owners often encourage such overloading to cut down on their transport costs/increase their profit margins. Such excess loading not only reduces the functional age of the vehicle but also causes considerable damage to the highways which are not built to such excessive loads.
7.3.7 The Drivers’ survey sought information on the average authorised tonnage and average tonnage actually carried by various types of vehicles. As expected not many drivers admitted that they had indulged in overloading their vehicles.
7.3.8 Driver’s experience: It is sometimes contended that the low levels of literacy and skills of the truck drivers result in disregard of traffic and road safety rules, which again contribute to bottlenecks en route and cause delays. While it is true that a minimum level of education is necessary for the drivers to understand the traffic signage and rules, education by itself would not necessarily improve the driving quality of the drivers, as may be observed from the erratic and often arrogant driving behaviours of the educated drivers on the roads of Delhi. Driving experience, however, is important. Some information has been collected from the drivers about their driving experience which has
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been summarized in the table and chart given below (Table 7.7). From the table it appears that transporters have maximum number of drivers who are well experienced of 6 years or more. New drivers are relatively small, and even though they may have a licence of 1-2 years, they are rarely given an independent charge of a vehicle.
Table 7.7: Distribution of Drivers by Driving Experience No. of drivers by years of driving exp.
State/Locality 7.3 Operational Costs and Profits
7.3.1 The pattern of expenditure of goods transporting units is presented in Table 7.8 for all the seven States combined.
Table 7.8: Pattern of Expenditure of Goods Transporting Units by Type of Unit Item of Expenditure Urban Rural
DIRECT
Other Expenditure 0.1 0.3
Total 83.2 80.5
OVERHEAD
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