Transports

In the plants, the bananas are starting to ripen. It’s harvest time. Box after box is filled with greenish bananas, which are about to be sent to the customers. Lorries are loaded with boxes and drive off. Some go to nearby shops.

Others go to a harbour by the coast. There, the boxes are loaded into containers. The containers are placed aboard large vessels, and are shipped all over the world. Ever since people began engaging in trade, they have needed to move their goods, transport them, to their customers. This must be done quickly, cheaply, and safely.

You don’t want to lose any goods on the way. This film is about efficient transportation. Most of the world’s transportation happens on the ocean. Ships are an efficient mode of transport if the goods need to be taken long distances, such as between two continents. A vessel can carry an enormous load on one journey: several thousand containers.

This means each individual box is cheap to transport, even though the ships and harbours are both expensive to build. Compare this with air transport. An aircraft can only carry a tiny amount compared to a ship. To transport as much as a ship can carry, you would have to make many trips back and forth. This is expensive.

Not only that, aircraft release large amounts of greenhouse gasses, which contributes to global warming. But if you need fast transport over long distances, aircraft are the best option. Air transport makes it possible for fresh mangoes from India to be sold in London the day after they are picked. Fresh fish can be caught in the sea off Australia in the morning, and be served in a restaurant in Tokyo the same night. If the goods need to be transported shorter distances on land, lorries are the cheapest option.

Lorries are easy and cheap to load and unload. And lorries are good if you need to arrive at a certain defined time. This factory produces apple sauce. They need lots of apples in the factory, but they do not want any apples lying around. It costs money to maintain a warehouse, and the apples go bad if they are stored for too long.

That is why the apples must arrive immediately before they are to be crushed. This is called just-in-time. And for this, lorries work best. But the problem with lorries is that they too, just like aircraft, release large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Transportation by train these days is much more environmentally friendly than by lorry and plane.

And trains are efficient for transporting goods on land, over long distances. But trains need a network of tracks. The railways are expensive to build and repair. Ships, planes, lorries, and trains are the varieties of transportation used today. To function, each needs more than just the vehicles.

Ships need harbours. Lorries need roads. Aircraft need airports. Trains need railway tracks. All this is called infrastructure.

An infrastructure that functions well makes transportation possible over the whole world. And that makes it possible to buy cheap fruit in your local shop, even though it’s grown thousands of kilometres away.