Transport and Logistics Demand: New Input from Large Surveys of Shippers in France

Freight transport is closely linked to industrial and commercial activities and can be seen as a fully integrated element of the production process. Shipper production and logistic constraints play an important role in the choice of transport solutions. However, there are few statistics on which to base an analysis of the relationship between transport and its production- and logistics-related determinants. Two large national surveys were undertaken in France to provide new empirical data. The methodological aspects of these surveys—the 1988 shipper survey and the 2004 survey by the European Community Humanitarian Office—are presented. The use of the shipment as the measurement unit instead of the usual tonne or tonne-kilometer approach is one of the major innovations of these surveys that provide new statistical insight. Another particularity is the tracking of the shipment and the identification of each transport leg and operator involved in the shipment. The entire transport chain, physical and organizational, is described. A selection of results, indicators, and trends is presented with a focus on the main changes in recent years, on the basis of a comparison between the two data sets. Special attention is paid to the relationship between transport choices and the production characteristics of sites and the increasing spatial and temporal fragmentation of shipments, which makes the choice of modes other than the road increasingly difficult.