Long-Term Strategies for Multimodal Transportation of Block Rubber in Thailand

Thailand is one of the world's leading exporters of block rubbers, mainly used in the automobile industry. The country strives to produce a better quality of block rubber and deliver the products to the industry, at competitive prices, to maintain its competitiveness and move ahead with sustainable growth. The government promotes a multimodal transportation to reduce logistics costs and increase the transportation network efficiency. This study develops a system dynamics (SD) model of the multimodal transportation of block rubber transportation in Thailand, to examine the different mode combinations of block rubber transportation in the long term. The results confirm using multimodal transportation (i.e., truck-ship and truck-train modes) to minimize the final logistics cost of the block rubber transportation from the growing areas to the export point, in the long term. Multimodal transportation can save up to half the final logistics costs, compared to the truck-only mode. The truck-ship and truck-train mode combinations are preferred in the southern and northeastern regions, respectively, as they provide the lowest logistics costs, in the long term. With government supports in port expansion, double-track enlargement, and access roads to ports and railway stations, multimodal transportation is expected to reduce the final logistics cost by half each year. All of these raise the country's competitiveness on a global scale and achieve a sustainable growth and development of block rubber products in the long term. The developed SD model provides a guideline for the multimode selection of block rubber and other agricultural products with bulk transportation, to achieve the lowest logistics cost and enhance the transport efficiency, in the long term.