One year of Trucks-on-Train service shows huge growth potential, says DFCCIL

The Trucks-on-Train service, launched on the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor on September 18, 2023, has emerged as a unique initiative for business growth, road decongestion, and pollution control, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation India Limited (DFCCIL) said on Tuesday.

The service completed its one year on September 18, and the experiment has shown that this new transportation model has a huge growth scope. It can be a win-win situation for both companies and freight operations.

In the Trucks-on-Train (TOT) service, 30 trucks are loaded onto a freight train daily at Palanpur in Gujarat and transported to Rewari in Haryana through the corridor covering a distance of 630 km in around 12 hours.

After unloading them at Rewari, they are driven to their destinations by road. Once the products are delivered, the empty trucks are loaded back onto the train and sent to the originating point.

"Out of 30, 25 are milk tankers which come by road from Amul dairy in Banas to Palanpur loading point. Other 5 trucks carry different products such as vegetables, machinery, diesel oil etc," a spokesperson of the DFCCIL said.

He added, "We provide a special coach for truck drivers to take rest throughout the journey. The 25 tankers after getting unloaded at Rewari, are driven by road to Prithala in Faridabad where Amul has another dairy to package milk and other dairy products."

According to DFCCIL officials, earlier while the same tankers used to reach Prithala in 30 hours from Banas dairy, the freight corridor has reduced the travelling time by 20 hours ensuring the quality of milk is as good as it is at the time of loading.

"We can say that people in Delhi-NCR are served better quality milk than what they were getting earlier. At the time of filling the tankers, its temperature is maintained at 2 degree Celsius which remain more or less same in 10 hours of journey," the spokesperson said.

"Besides being faster, the TOT service reduces road congestion, controls pollution and improves truck drivers working standards," the official said.

According to the officials, the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) have been envisaged to ensure reliable, economical and faster transportation of goods.

The 2,843 km long, passing through 56 districts in 7 states, is now 96.4 per cent complete. "The 1,337 km long Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) runs from Ludhiana to Sonnagar and the 1,506 km long Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) connects Dadri in Uttar Pradesh with Mumbai," the DFCCIL officials said.

Further, he said, "EDFC is now 100 per cent complete & operational with feeder routes to different coal mines and thermal power plants. The WDFC is also 93.2 per cent complete with feeder routes serving various cement plants and the large ports of Mundra, Kandla, Pipavav, and Hazira in Gujarat."