Longer lorries.

[Brigadier]

In the UK, it is more likely 150mile, may as well just do the whole thing on a lorry, saves a lot of loading unloading....

That's what containers are for.

When I get the train down to London for meetings, a couple of freight trains thunder past while I'm waiting for my train to arrive (Lichfield Trent Valley).

Difficult to count while they're passing at (60mph?), but it's upwards of 40 shipping containers on each. That's 40 HGVs not clogging up the motorway, not getting stuck in traffic, not wrecking hundreds of miles of road surfaces.
And that's one train.

 

[noseall]

Coincidentally I saw a lorry and trailer in Howdens the other day which struck me as being bigger than usual. Although they shift a lot of doors the pre assembled kitchen cabinets are obviously all bulk and no weight. Most of the Howdens stores I've come across tend to be in inustrial areas and have a decent sized yard.

Makes sense for them.

Howdens and their 4.2m (max) length products, sigh.
Buying archies from them and I asked why they don't stock longer increments. "Oh, a 4.2m will do two archie legs" he said.
"Not on a metric door it won't laddie".

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Now THIS is a proper truck (1980s German prototype)...

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

And THIS is the reality of having massive trucks on British streets, despite whatever the trucker lobby seem to believe...

 

[bernardgreen]

Also known as The underfloor tractor.

Steinwinter-Konzept: Lkw-Vision von 1983 | autozeitung.de

Lkw sehen alle gleich aus? Von wegen! Manfred Steinwinter hat mit seinem Supercargo-Konzept schon 1983 gezeigt, dass man Waren schöner transportieren könnte.

www.autozeitung.de

Cooling the engine was difficult as there is no space for an effective air cooled radiator

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I would have thought that aerodynamics was also an issue, as the front of the trailer is shaped like a brick, and the windscreen funnels the air into a tiny gap under the trailer.

One comment was that the forward visibility was also an issue - the weight of a truck with the view of a sports car.

Road spray onto the windscreen must be ridiculous. The driver will definitely die in any crash at any reasonable speed. Cab-forward vans have pretty much died out in the west for this reason.

The only saving is length, but without any articulation along the trailer's length that probably doesn't solve any issues anyway. In reality the trailer wouldn't be able to be any longer than a current one to get around the loading bays.

Cool, but way too many issues with it.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

That's what containers are for.

When I get the train down to London for meetings, a couple of freight trains thunder past while I'm waiting for my train to arrive (Lichfield Trent Valley).

Difficult to count while they're passing at (60mph?), but it's upwards of 40 shipping containers on each. That's 40 HGVs not clogging up the motorway, not getting stuck in traffic, not wrecking hundreds of miles of road surfaces.
And that's one train.

The bottleneck, is the lines - too much passenger traffic, to fit goods trains in. During the night/holidays etc. they squeeze in the track maintenance.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

When you work out the cost and time involved in the loading/unloading, paying the crane driver, the train company, all the (very well paid) train staff, it's unlikely to make financial sense for a truck company to bother as it's likely to cost more than the cost of driving the couple of hundred miles it will save.

Plus they still need to organise a second truck to collect at the other end.

It would be more likely to make sense if we could have drive-on trains along popular routes, as on the channel tunnel. No mucking about with cranes, no second truck. As long as the fare costs less than the diesel and wear and tear on the truck then it would make sense. Again though, it's difficult to make the sums stack up for the short distances in this country.