01 Jan As you study Chapter

As you study Chapter 8 on transportation, and as you review the module content, you will learn about transport efficiencies brought about by the introduction of the standard intermodal shipping container in the 1970s and 1980s. This container brought us logistics globalization, which is the biggest thing to hit logistics since the interstate highway system. 1. Research information on the land-bridge concept whereby containers originating in east Asia and destined for markets in western Europe head eastward across the Pacific in a container ship, land on the west coast of the U.S., are put on a unit train across America to a port on the east coast of America, and then head eastward across the Atlantic in another container ship. There are also offshoots to this major land bridge concept. One is called the “origin mini bridge” which has cargo originating on the west coast of the United States and heading for Europe cross America by train and then off to Europe by container ship. Another is a “destination mini bridge” where the origin of the cargo is in east Asia and the destination is the east coast of the United States. Here the cargo heads eastward across the Pacific and takes a train route to the east coast of the United States.For each of the land bridges—(1) the main bridge, east Asia to western Europe via U.S. unit trains, (2) the origin minibridge, U.S. west coast to Europe via US unit trains, and (3) the destination mini-bridge, east Asia to east coast U.S. via U.S. unit trains—answer the following questions (a) What are the alternatives transport routes that these bridges are replacing? (b) How big is this market?(c) What are the savings in time and costs in using these bridges versus the alternatives?

Respond to two of your classmate’s discussions.