Freight economy - Transportation process

Freight transport moves goods in space and, necessarily, in time (because this operation is not instantaneous, unlike the transport of information by telecommunications, to which it is sometimes compared). It is a technical and economic function that cuts across all the others. It is the indispensable support for the entire production system, from upstream to downstream: from raw materials procurement to the manufacture and distribution of end products, and then to the after-sales support that accompanies their entire life cycle. Transport also contributes to the post-consumer product return circuit, for recovery and waste recycling. The omnipresence and necessity of transport make it a major component of every stage in a country's development, from the earliest stages to the most recent developments in the most prosperous economies.

From a technical point of view, transport has the characteristics of an industrial activity. From an organizational and legal point of view, when it is carried out by a specialized company on behalf of a customer, it takes on the characteristics of a service: in other words, a relationship between two parties. The various meanings of the word "freight" reflect the diversity of the players involved in transport, and their respective roles within a functioning system. According to Alain Rey's Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (Paris, Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992, 2 vols.), "fret refers to the price of transporting goods by sea (XIII ^e s.) – today also by road, by air –, by metonymy and commonly the cargo itself (1596), the rental price of a ship (1606) and the rental of a transport ship used to transport goods (1681, à fret), then applied to any means of transport".

The dual aspect of transport's autonomy and dependence on other activities also applies to technical, organizational and social innovation. Transport is driven by its own dynamics, with constant progress in infrastructure, rolling stock and information systems controlling both physical flows and commercial relations. At the same time, it is directly affected by innovation in other sectors, in whose operations it is an integral part. In this article, transport is considered as an industrial process. In the following article [AG 8 006] , we will examine how it fits into wider logistics organizations and how, through its external effects, it has a strong political and social dimension.