DFCCIL seeks more wagons for truck-on-train service amid rising demand

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The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited has requested the Railway Board to provide additional wagons suitable for its truck-on-train service, officials said on Sunday.

The truck-on-train (ToT) service enables the transportation of trucks and milk tankers on specially designed wagons. It was launched on the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor on September 18, 2023 and plies between Rewari in Haryana and Palanpur in Gujarat.

The service significantly reduces transportation cost and time, traffic congestion, and air pollution, among other benefits.

Officials said that nearly a year after the launch, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) wrote to the Railway Board seeking more wagons to tap its growing business potential, and has been pursuing the request since then. However, the Railway Board is yet to fulfil it.

Industry sources said the ToT service requires a specially-designed Flat Multi-Purpose (FMP) wagon, which is currently being manufactured with deliveries expected to begin early next year.

"Currently, we are using Bogie Rail Wagon for ToT services. It is also a flat wagon, but FMP is multi-purpose and suitable for the DFCCIL business model," a Board official said.

At present, in the ToT service, 30 trucks are loaded onto a freight train every day at Palanpur and transported to Rewari through the corridor covering a distance of 630 kilometres in around 12 hours.

Once the products are delivered, the empty trucks are loaded back onto the train to return to the starting point.

Out of 30 (trucks), 25 are milk tankers which come by road from an Amul dairy in Banas to the Palanpur loading point. The other five trucks carry different products such as vegetables, machinery, diesel oil, etc," a DFCCIL official said.

"We add a special coach in the freight train for drivers who rest for 12 hours during 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," he added.

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

Calling the initiative a game-changer for the logistics sector, officials said that while railways commonly face challenges such as limited first- and last-mile connectivity, minimum consignment requirements, and customer concerns regarding high-value freight, the ToT model offers an immediate solution to address these issues.

"This intermodal approach not only saves transit time but also alleviates road congestion, enhances drivers' quality of life by ensuring adequate rest, and most importantly, reduces carbon emissions," they said.

"We have demands from various industries to operate similar ToT service from other destinations, and we are waiting for FMP wagons," a DFCCIL official said.