Citation

Talley WK. Transp. Res. Rec. 1981; 828: 1-3.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present various methodologies that have been used for analyzing transportation costs as well as to discuss their merits and shortcomings with respect to the following purposes of transportation cost analysis: (a) to investigate such broad issues as economies of scale and production properties of transport firms and (b) to determine specific (or fully allocated) costs for particular transportation movements. The methodologies have generally been of three types--engineering, accounting, and economic. The principal conclusions of the paper are that (a) economic cost functions or economic cost functions in conjunction with engineering models are the desirable methodologies for investigating economies of scale and production properties of transportation firms and (b) accounting costing is a desirable methodology for determining fully allocated costs of transportation movements.