An Empirical Evaluation of Investigating Transportation Mode Attributes for Commodities

A number of transportation demand models have been formulated using the abstract mode concept. Unfortunately, most of these models use a priori economic theory to derive the variables used in the analysis. This study describes an empirical approach for the specification of mode attributes used by purchasers of transportation modes for the movement of commodities. Results reported from a study conducted on the Montreal-Toronto corridor in Canada suggest that a number of important variables have been neglected in models of carrier selection for freight.