Analysis of Competitiveness of Freight Tricycle Delivery Services in Urban Areas

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2410, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2014, pp. 76–84. DOI: 10.3141/2410-09 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. Corresponding author: M. Figliozzi, figliozzi@ pdx.edu. Limitations are also associated with freight tricycles, chiefly their limited cargo capacity and relatively low operating speed. From the viewpoint of shippers and truck companies, total logistics cost is a crucial factor when making decisions or thinking about any changes to their supply chains. With publicly available data from an existing freight tricycle delivery company in Portland, Oregon, key factors that affect tricycles’ cost competitiveness are analyzed. The goal is to compare the competitiveness of freight tricycles against diesel-powered delivery vans. Because the freight that is delivered by tricycle is often light and small, diesel vans are the natural competitor—single-unit trucks, the other dominant urban delivery vehicles, are more expensive than vans and would have a high percentage of underutilized capacity. Efforts are made to present a realistic case study. However, the goal of this research is not to represent the costs of one company but to study the key factors that affect tricycle competitiveness by analyzing cost elasticity values and the sensitivity of breakeven values. The ultimate goal is to derive insights that are applicable to cities and companies outside Portland. For comparison of tricycle and van costs, a model was developed that incorporated vehicle ownership and operation models, logistics constraints such as time windows and cargo capacity, and fuel consumption and energy use. The next section presents a brief literature review, and the following sections present the cost and logistics model, case study assumptions, and results.