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Jehaan Adil Kotwal, the Founder CEO of Good Mind and HumSafer Driver Safety Foundation, an NGO that addresses driver welfare by leveraging AI and offering support in areas like training, medical facilities and scholarships for drivers’ children, highlights a few issues connected to multimodal logistics.
Multimodal transportation offers significant advantages, including optimised efficiency by leveraging the strengths of each mode of transport, such as road, rail, and sea. Integrated operations enhance reliability, cost-effectiveness & sustainability and allows for wider reach by enabling seamless transitions between different modes.
Innovations like real-time tracking, GPS-enabled devices, automated cargo management, and predictive analytics improve transparency, reduce inefficiencies, and enhance decision-making. Integrated software solutions for route optimisation and cargo coordination can minimise delays and optimise the use of various transportation modes.
Intermodal terminals are crucial for ensuring efficient switching between transport modes. These facilities act as hubs where cargo can be transferred between trucks, trains, and ships. Properly designed terminal help minimise handling costs and mitigate delays.
Policies, Billing and Challenges:
India faces several unique challenges when it comes to multimodal logistics. These include a lack of infrastructure, inconsistent standards, and delays caused by the manual documentation process. Transport costs remain high due to inefficiencies in the system, such as underutilised vehicles, extended detention times, and outdated equipment. Furthermore, regulatory complexities and slow adoption of standardised practices add to the difficulties. A standardised detention policy and extension of e-way bill validity are essential for overcoming these barriers.
The government has made progress by introducing provisions for GST on part truck loads and allowing e-way bills to include multiple consignments in a single truckload. In the organised sector, there is already a provision for part truck-load GST available, However, further improvements are necessary, particularly in streamlining the billing processes and introducing clear guidelines for detention charges across all transport modes. A unified approach across road, rail, and sea transport would help optimise billing, reduce fraud, and ensure faster payments.
Transporters too face a challenge because of multiple parcel loads and sometimes it would take more than the transit time given for that parcel to reach its destination. If it is a small consignment, it goes from the depot to the warehouse then again from the warehouse to the next warehouse depot and finally to the customer. That is how logistics works. Sometimes these cycles could take anywhere between eight to ten days though the transit time is hardly five days. That is the reason for the need to have extension on e-way bills. Some transport companies used to get fined heavily for delays but now they have figured out a provision on how to extend e-way bills in the organised sector.
Transportation costs are much higher in India as compared to those in other countries. One of the reasons was the running time of vehicles. While vehicles in India run on an average 200-250kms a day, those in the West run 500 to 600kms a day. One of the main reasons for low running time is lack of a standardised detention policy. For an average truck the detention charges for a day are between `700 to `1000, whereas for a cab it is `1500. Consequently, trucks are detained for a longer period –typically out of 30 days the truck is running for only 15 days – so automatically the cost goes up. There needs to be a policy in place not to allow detention over a certain number of hours. The second reason is, there is lack of standardisation even for drivers. This results in a shortage, causing vehicles to stand longer thereby increasing costs.
From a multimodal perspective, where rail, ocean and road transport are used over long distances, transport costs are less prohibitive. For example, in a steel plant, the steel gets transported by a truck from the plant to a railway yard which is generally inside the plant itself and from there it travels long-distance to a location where a trailer will pick it up and take it to the customer endpoint. Thus, instead of a truck picking up steel and traveling all 1500kms, the railway takes over mid-journey. This is true of coastal shipping as well, so that is one way to avoid or reduce the cost of logistics.