| Transportation is an important material production sector in the national economy. It links the social production, distribution, exchange and consumption and is necessary to ensure the normal operation and development of socio-economic activities. Road transportation develops very rapidly because it offers the door to door service. During the past 20 years, China's road transportation played an important role in promoting economic growth and improving living standards. In the past several decades, the management system and market structure had occurred great changes about road freight transportation in the domestic market. In the period of planned economy, road freight transportation industry was in the monopoly stage because of the strict economic controls. And in the Reform and Opening-up period, perfect competition market emerged gradually in the road freight transportation industry. It brought the excessive competition in road transportation of cargo. Price was the main competitive way due to low barriers and excessive transport capacity among companies and the price competition led to some companies had to offer transport service at the cost price or even lower price than that. Such behavior brought the increase in the illegal operations and overload transportation and this industry was in a confused or disordered condition, performance was going downhill.Now there are a large number of foreign-funded enterprises enter in the domestic road freight transportation market. While they only set up joint ventures to develop the market, by this way, foreign-funded enterprises have begun to appear more frequently in the bidding site about large logistics or freight projects. With a wealth of experience to get projects, foreign-funded enterprises do not operate projects by themselves, but subcontract the road freight transportation business at the lower cost to effortlessly get more profit. Price competition has more directly reflected in the freight companies. Some common freight transportation prices are still less than 0.40 yuan per ton-km. Several reasons led to the intense price competition, one is the supply exceed demand in freight, but the most important reason is non-standard freight bidding behavior. In this situation, some freight companies have to lower price when they face the increasingly fierce competition. That will make the profit decrease. Others even join the ranks of overloading. Those behaviors are very unfavorable for the stable development of freight transport market.The price of road transport has a direct impact on the benefits of transport operators, passenger, and Cargo owner. State administration must protect the legitimate interests of citizens, legal persons and other legal organizations. Therefore, government authorities need to protect their legitimate interests by formulating a reasonable freight rate and regulating the administration of freight rate. Accordingly, it will achieve the sustainable development of road transport. This paper analyzes the development of freight transportation and the trend of freight rates in different period. On the basis of those analyses, the history of road freight policy and the formation mechanism of road freight are analyzed deeply. The structure of freight rate is analyzed and the cost is calculated bases primarily on data obtained in actual survey. The analysis method is the average cost-plus method, which is based on the break-even theory to measure out a reasonable road freight level and the conclusion can provide a reference for related sectors to make policy and freight companies to make a reasonable price.Concluding the research work in this paper, main results as the followings:First, the existing related research and development trend of road freight transport industry were summarized. The development of domestic and international transport industry and the research status on transport and freight rate were summarized by literature review, and then a clear entry point for this study was gained. Choosing the United States as an example, the history, situation and development trend of transportation industry in western developed countries were analyzed, and, Chinese road freight industry was especially analyzed deeply.Second, the curve of domestic road freight transport was established in the paper. According to the actual data in domestic, a freight level curve was established and based on the characteristics of the curve, this paper summed up the trend of freight level in different period and gives the brief analysis of the freight development trend in the future.Third, this paper analyzes the formation mechanism of domestic road freight transportation. This paper analyzes the history of pricing policy on road transportation in domestic market and the implementation status and the current "rule over" issues are also discussed. The supply and demand relationship on road freight transportation was also analyzed. Based on the analysis of the domestic market economic system, this paper analyzes the freight price formation mechanism and summarizes the structure of freight rate.Fourth, this paper analyzes the cost structure of road freight, which was based on the integrated multi-provincial survey data. According to the survey on the four categories of goods (coal, vegetables, food, household appliances) in the different provinces whose transport way was road, the transportation costs are calculated separately. The results show that the transport cost of tolls, fuel (including fuel tax) accounted for the largest proportion, above 60%.Fifth, this paper calculates the reasonable price of road freight transportation. According to the estimate results of the transportation cost, this paper selects the cost-plus pricing method, break-even analysis and interest rate and inflation rate which based on domestic current debt to measure out a reasonable freight level of road freight transportation, which was in the range of 0.50 to 0.75 yuan per ton-km.6. Control method of reasonable freight rate level was proposedConsidering the current problems in the process of freight rate implementation, the improvement of government management system and industrial policy strategy were put forward. The normal market order should be maintained by implementing strict control, developing industry scale economies and other measures, and then a reasonable level of freight rate can be ensured. |
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