MODELING THE FREIGHT RATE STRUCTURE

While an understanding of the freight rate structure is necessary to an understanding of the freight transportation industry, remarkably little has been known about the subject. The primary difficulty in studying the tariffs of regulated carriers is the complex and voluminous nature of these tariffs. Data on unregulated carrier traiffs are largely unavailable. This report describes the specification and estimation of a set of tariff models using disaggregated data from waybills. The models are functions of the attributes of the shipment, and are thus, "commodity abstract" and origin-destination abstract." This technique makes possible the estimation of the elasticity of rate with respect to the attributes of a shipment, prediction of rates for use in freight planning, an estimation of the prediction errors, and intermodal comparisons of tariff structures. Rate relationships for the various modes which may be inferred from the models are discussed. Guidelines are suggested for using tariff models in freight demand studies.

• Corporate Authors:

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Center for Transportation Studies, Room 1121
  Cambridge, MA  United States  02139
• Authors:
  • SAMUELSON, R D
• Publication Date: 1977-2

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 144 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Competition; Forecasting; Freight traffic; Mathematical models; Modal split; Rate making; Rates; Tariffs; Traffic forecasting; Transportation modes
• Uncontrolled Terms: Freight rates
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00174357
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Report/Paper Numbers: CTS-77-7
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 18 1978 12:00AM