The Natural Cost Advantages of Water Based Transportation

Executive Summary

• The advantages of water-based transportation and what water-based transportation is best used for.

Introduction

Transportation by ship is the oldest form of large-scale transportation. To understand why transportation by ship has and had even more so in the past, such as greater ability to move material more economically than land and even air-based options, the reasons can be considered as the following:

Surface Investment

Land-based forms of transportation require investment in the infrastructure over which the land vehicle will ride. Even a dirt road requires maintenance. Ship-based transportation requires no investments in the surface over which a ship will ride. The slippery nature of water, which is a function of how its molecules bond and re-bond with one another, also means that the friction against a ship’s hull is comparatively low.

Size Limitations

Land-based forms of transportation have distinct size limitations. A truck must fit within the road’s width and the available parking, while a rail car can protrude a certain width from the wheels and the gauge of the track. Air transportation has fewer limitations but still has more size limitations than ship transportation. An airplane has to be able to “fit in” and land in airports and meet the requirements of a safe flight. Ocean vessels have far fewer limitations. Ocean vessels grew to quite an economical size even when the construction material was wood. And because the ocean is open, there is no consideration for how large the sails might be regarding interfering with other objects.

However, with the development of steel ships, the size continued to increase to the point where ships are now some of the largest man-made objects in the world. The larger truck, train, ship, and airplane are more efficient and in moving freight. Its energy efficiency improves and requires less labor per pound of material moved than with smaller vehicles.

Power Source

Humans sometimes powered waterborne vessels. However, open water provides one of the easiest energy sources to harness, which is the wind. The first sails were square-rigged and substantially limited where ships could go and when they could go there, but with the development of the triangular rig, ships could go anywhere – although how fast they got there would always depend upon the weather. It was the sail and sturdy ships that initiated the colonial period, which significantly increased trade and led to the consumption of entirely new products by people who had no other way of getting them.

Large capacity ocean vessels were moving material worldwide in significant quantities, while state of the art in land-based transportation was still a horse-drawn wagon. Before the development of railroads, it was more cost-effective for people in America to trade with Europe than to trade with people in neighboring states if the material was carried by land. That was the enormous efficiency and cost advantage that water-based transportation held over land-based transportation. Water-based transportation is still the lowest cost form of transportation, although it gave up its mantle of being the fastest some time ago.