Metsähakkeen autokuljetuksen logistiikan ja kuljetuskaluston kehittäminen: PUUT20

Transportation costs of forest chips effect significantly on the competitiveness of forest chip production. Transportation economy of forest chips is poor due to low volume weight and low energy density of chips. In practice forest chips has to be transported from small storages located on wide area, where the transpor-tation conditions are often poor. Due to this the transportation costs increase rapidly as the transportation distance increases. It is possible to reduce the transportation cost of forest chips by improving the transportation economy. This means the improvement of the volume weight of the load within the limits set by the transportation legislation, and by increasing the energy density, i.e. maximisation of the energy content of the load. In summer it is typical that in the case of relatively dry forest chips a part of the capacity of a lorry cannot be utilised due to the low volume weight of the chips and insufficient filling rate of the load space of the lorry. One objective of this project is to develop loading methods for forest chips. Developing of the transportation logistics can also reduce transportation costs of forest chips. This means that the waiting times of the lorries have to be reduced both at the forest terminals and at the fuel reception of a power plant. This requires inspection of the total delivery chain from a forest terminal to the power plant. Development of the navigation of vehicles between different storage sites so that extra driving of the lorries could be eliminated would also increase operating times of vehicles. Information systems, based on digital map data and GPS-navigation, have been developed for control of the transportation. The applicability of these methods for control of forest chips transportation will be tested in this project.