• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.25-35
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• 2011

In order to reduce Green House Gas(GHG) reduction in the road freight sector and thus establish green logistics, running efficiency of goods vehicles is of paramount importance. Providing effective transportation infrastructure can contribute to achieve the green logistics by reducing empty running of heavy goods vehicles and van, increasing the average payload on the vehicle, and shifting the transportation mode. In order to reduce the environmental impact from the road freight sector, it is essential to quantify the amount of environmental loading from the sector. However, any systematic survey on the environmental loading from the logistics companies has not been carried out in Korea. In this study, the environmental index for the road freight sector is defined as the amount of $CO_2$ emission per ton km generated from goods vehicles. The computational analysis shows that the average $CO_2$ emission per ton km generated by the logistics companies in Korea is $363g-CO_2/ton{\cdot}km$. Compared to UK (=$130g-CO_2/ton{\cdot}km$) and France (=$97g-CO_2/ton{\cdot}km$), the efficiency of logistics in Korea is 2.8 and 3.7 times as low as in the advanced countries. It also indicates that the main reasons for the low efficiency are mainly due to the high rate of empty operation of goods vehicles and the low payload.