Trade-offs in Multimodal Transport Options: The Case of Logs Carriage from U.S. to South Korea

Dong-Wook Kwak^*, Young-Joon Seo^**

^*First author, School of Strategy and Leadership, Coventry University, United Kingdom, d.kwak@coventry.ac.uk

^**Corresponding author, International Shipping and Logistics Group, Plymouth Business School, Plymouth University, United Kingdom, Y.Seo@plymouth.ac.uk

© Copyright 2021 Korea Maritime Institute. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jun 30, 2016

ABSTRACT

This study aims to explain the concept of multimodal transport and to provide the motives of and key trade-offs in utilising multimodal transport. To demonstrate these, a case study as a main methodology, carriages of logs from the U.S. to South Korea, was analysed by the “UNCTAD Cost Model”. By doing so, this study clarifies motives and trade-offs of multimodal transport with a real case. The finding of this study suggests that optimised use of multimodal transport with consideration of their trade-offs can enhance shippers’ competitiveness in globalised circumstances. Besides, this finding can help the managers of multimodal transport companies to minimise the transport costs and time in the transportation of log carriages between U.S. and South Korea.

Keywords: multimodal transport; logistics; international transport; inter-modalism; logs carriage