Transportation versus perishability in life cycle energy consumption: A case study of the temperature-controlled food product supply chain

Moving goods from the point of production to markets involves energy use and can have adverse environmental effects. But from the supply chain management perspective, the control of the supply chain, with short time cycles between production and sale to customer, can benefit the environment by closely tailoring production to consumption, and by minimizing the amount of “perishability” in the chain. An energy consumption model is used to explore potential tradeoffs between these two competing tendencies and applied to temperature-controlled food products produced in agricultural regions in the US with mild climates and then distributed around the country using surface transportation. Although the use of rail can reduce life cycle energy consumption compared to truck, the increase in perishability of food products can undercut the energy savings, and in some circumstances, the use of inter-modal rail can be environmentally superior to carload freight for delivery.