•Multimodal or Intermodal transport refers to journeys that involve two or more different modes of transport.
•For instance, if materials are moved from Lanchow in central China to Warsaw in Poland goods may be loaded on to trucks, transferring them onto rails for a journey across China to Shanghai, then ship to Rotterdam, back into rails to cross Europe, then truck for local delivery.
•For Logistics managers intermodal services become necessary because of their characteristics and costs.
•For example, limited accessibility of air transport requires coordination with a land carrier to make the pick ups and deliveries.
•Similarly, inaccessibility applies to rail, water and pipeline but not to the motor which has a definite advantage here.
•The intermodal services maximizes the primary advantages inherent in the combined modes and minimize their disadvantages.
•The combined services will have both good and bad aspects of the utilized modes.
•For instance, coordinate of rail and water will have a lower total cost than an all-rail movement but higher cost than that of all-water.
•Likewise, combined system transit time will be lower than all water movement but higher than all-rail.
•The decision to use multi-modal system must consider the effect on total logistics costs.
•The aim of intermodal transport is to combine the benefits of several separate modes but avoid the disadvantages of each, like, combining the low cost of shipping with flexibility of the road, or getting the speed of air with the cost of road.
•However, each transfer between modes causes delays and adds costs of extra handling.
•Intermodal transport works well when transfer can be done efficiently.
•Transfer of motor carrier trailer to another transport mode is facilitated through containerization.
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