Demand for Freight Transport

The demand for freight supplies is a physical expression of the economy and the result of the interaction of multiple supply chains. Typically, an agent produces and/or sends supplies (the shipper) that are then consumed by a different agent (the receiver), after they are transported by the carrier. At each one of these stages supplies are consumed, transformed, produced, or stored. Thus, gaining insight into freight demand is crucial and necessary. Nevertheless, data about freight demand are very hard to get, as there are only a handful of publicly available estimates. This paper attempts to fill this void by describing empirical evidence concerning freight demand. To do so, the authors gathered data and results from several sources representing developed and developing countries, different levels of geography (i.e., multinational, national, and metropolitan), and a time span from the 1960s to current times. The data collected were post-processed to estimate the per-capita freight generation, that is, the total amount of freight transported by type of commodity, divided by the corresponding population. The resulting values were analyzed to identify similarities and differences.