CARRIAGE OF GOODS BY LAND

There three (3) main means of transportation for goods, which are notably road, railway and canal. It should also be noted of air transportation which is frequently used even for such short distances as New York to Abuja. Some goods are carried on the regular internal air services: in other cases aircraft are specially chartered. The shorter the distance, however, the more the chief advantage offered by air transport, namely speed is reduced. The main reason for this is the length of time that it normally takes to transport goods to and from airports to town centers. The growing use of the helicopter offsets this and may result in carriage of larger quantities at present transported by air relatively small.  Transportation involves questions of cost, speed safety, and also of convenience and suitability for the kind of goods to be transported. As  regards the last mentioned consideration, it is difficult always to draw a hard and fast line  for instance in the case of heavy and bulky  merchandise. Large quantities of  worked minerals such as clay , limestone , sand  and of worked minerals  such as bricks, tiles, lime also  certain sorts  of coal , some heavy manufactured goods  and some  non- particularly  in cases  where the works , depots or warehouse of the consignors  and consignees have  easy access to the inland waterways. All these  classes of goods  are in  other  cases  more  conveniently  transported  by rail, especially  where railway  siding  accommodation  is available  at both ends of the journey. When road transport first started to come into its own, it was thought that while road vehicles would take a great proportion of the lighter traffic from the railways, the latter would still retain all the heavy traffic. In actual fact goods of enormous weight, such as boilers and ships, castings are from time to time carried by road. The bulk of this traffic however remains with the railways as does a large proportion of medium traffic. The great advantages of road over rail transport  are that  for short  and intermediate  distances road transport  is quicker  than rail  and only  one loading   and one unloading  operation  is s involved, transport  being  from door to door. The railways have some extent overcome the handicap of the double handling by the introduction of the container system. Even long before  there was any question  of nationalization  they  also recognized  the superiority  in some  respects  of road  over  rail transport  and fortified  their position  by acquiring the businesses of existing  road transport companies and setting  up such companies  themselves.

Cost in order of cheapness	Speed for short distance	Speed for long distance	Safety	convenience
Canal Road Railway, Air.	Road Air, Railway Canal.	Air , Railway, road canal	Canal, railway road, air.	Road, Air, Railway, Canal.

The table above show the comparing the four (4) means of inland transport from the economic point of view of the four considerations already mentioned via, cost, Speed, safety and convenience. The table cannot  be taken as being  more than generally correct  since whether one system of transport  is in fact  cheaper  or speedier  or more convenient  than another  in any particular  case depends  upon the circumstances. For a short distance such as 20 miles road transport is without a doubt the swiftest at present but for 100 miles air transport might be swifter. It  is interesting to note  that at the end of  the second world war 2 when it was proposed  to bring  in  an integrated  charges  scheme for nationalized road  and rail  industries, it was  expected that road  transport  would  be  cheaper for most  goods  for distances up to about 100 miles  that for distances  between  about 100 and 200 miles  the charges  would be approximately the same  by either  method  and  that the railways would  be cheaper  for greater distances.