Influencing factors on agricultural transports and their effect on energy consumption and average speed

Abstract

This article deals with the importance of transportation in agriculture, focusing on energy consumption and average speed of different agricultural transport vehicles. Transportation of goods is an important section of both logistics and agricultural production; therefore this article concentrates on the linkage of these two fields of study – agriculture and logistics. Against this background, current trends in logistics and their significance for and impact on agriculture are defined first. The presented data were collected via a road trial comparing agricultural transport vehicles to those commonly deployed in road haulage. The advantages of the well-established tractor lie – of course – in its high cross-country mobility and the many resulting fields of application on agricultural production. The off-road attributes of the tractor combined with the high level of soil protection are characteristics highly in its favor, especially when applying a single phase harvesting system. With multiphase transport chains on the other hand, the deployment of trucks can be the sensible choice because of their higher average speed and lesser fuel consumption compared to the tractor. Furthermore, the motorization of the tractor is a factor to be considered when choosing the right transport system, since a comparison between two forms of motorization showed clear differences in their road performance.

Keywords: agricultural transports, energy consumption, average transport speed, transport vehicle comparison