Can the move to introduce road trains – a set of 2-4 trailers hauled by a heavy duty prime mover – to Indian expressways be successful?
18 Mar 2025 | 655 Views | By Shahkar Abidi
Don't be surprised if you see a truck pulling multiple trailers chugging along the busy super highways such as those of Mumbai-Bengaluru, Nagpur-Gurugram, or Delhi-Mumbai. For decades, the image of the "road train" – a heavy-duty prime mover, or tractor unit, hauling a sinuous chain of trailers – conjured up ...
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Don't be surprised if you see a truck pulling multiple trailers chugging along the busy super highways such as those of Mumbai-Bengaluru, Nagpur-Gurugram, or Delhi-Mumbai. For decades, the image of the "road train" – a heavy-duty prime mover, or tractor unit, hauling a sinuous chain of trailers – conjured up visions of the vast, sparsely populated terrains of Australia or the American West.
But this icon of long-haul efficiency may soon make an unlikely debut on the bustling, and often congested, highways of India. These articulated leviathans, popularly referred to as 'road trains', are not just a spectacle of engineering; they represent a calculated maneuver to recalibrate the nation's freight arteries, promising a smoother, cheaper flow of goods across the subcontinent. The idea is clear: to leverage these elongated vehicles to not only move more cargo per journey but also to aggressively curtail India's logistics expenditure, which currently ranks among the steepest relative to GDP in the world's major economies.
An experimental foray towards this direction saw Delhivery Ltd., a major e-commerce logistics provider, completing extensive trials between their Nagpur and Bhiwandi distribution hubs. The vehicle of choice for this run was a Volvo road train, a meticulously engineered ensemble featuring a Volvo FM 420 4x2 tractor, a 24-feet containerized intermediate trailer, and a substantial 44-feet semi-trailer.
This is no mere concatenation of trailers; the Volvo road train is a rolling showcase of advanced automotive technology. Equipped with an electronic braking system, electronic stability program, a 360-degree camera array, and a self-steerable axle for the trailer, the vehicle also boasts a dashboard load monitor, downhill cruise control, and a "stretch brake" designed to enhance stability, as B Dinakar, EVP and Business Head at Volvo Trucks India, pointed out.
Changes in Regulation
From an industry standpoint, the initial application for road trains in India is focused on the burgeoning sectors of e-commerce, cement, infrastructure and retail. "Road trains are a natural next step, perfectly suited to our high volume line haul operations," noted Suraj Saharan, co-founder and chief people officer at Delhivery. Line haul operation, in logistics jargon, refers to the long-distance transportation between major hubs, a domain where road trains inherently excel. Saharan elaborated, "With India's expressway network expanding rapidly, we look forward to scaling this innovation across more routes in the near future."
The current regulatory environment, however, favors the transportation of high-volume, low-density cargo. As industry experts point out, should regulations evolve to permit higher gross vehicle weights – the total permissible weight of the vehicle and its cargo – road trains could readily adapt to transporting denser materials, broadening their applicability across sectors like manufacturing and heavy industry.
For decades, India's road transport regulations, framed by the Motor Vehicles Act and enforced at the state level, have presented a formidable barrier to vehicles of this scale. Historically, and even presently, these rules have been geared towards smaller, more maneuverable trucks, reflecting the realities of a road network that, while rapidly modernizing, still grapples with inherent limitations.
Narrower roads, bridges of varying load-bearing capacities, and tighter turning radii in older urban centers are infrastructural constraints that have historically favored the nimble over the gargantuan. Furthermore, India's robust railway network and extensive coastline have long provided viable alternatives for long-distance freight movement, particularly for bulk commodities. Rail and coastal shipping often eclipse road transport in terms of both cost-effectiveness and efficiency over extended distances, especially for cargo that is less time-sensitive.
Yet, the vision for road trains in India, as Vinod Aggarwal, MD & CEO of VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd, explains, was sparked by a desire to emulate international best practices. "The idea of introducing road trains in India began with a vision—one that took inspiration from international logistics and sought to revolutionize the country's transportation sector."
The seed was sown in 2019, as Aggarwal recounted, when Indian officials from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) began to seriously consider the potential. The core argument was compelling: with India's burgeoning network of world-class expressways, the nation required commensurate high-capacity transport solutions, akin to those successfully deployed in Europe, the United States, and other developed economies.
A pivotal moment arrived during a visit to Sweden by Minister Nitin Gadkari and his team. Witnessing firsthand the operational efficacy of road trains in a European context, Gadkari questioned why India, with its own expanding highway infrastructure, could not adopt a similar system. This transatlantic inspiration galvanized action.
Crucially, one of the first regulatory hurdles to be cleared was vehicle length. Previously capped at 18.75 meters, the maximum permissible length for trucks was extended in 2020 to 25.25 meters as a direct result of the government's commitment to facilitating road train operations. This regulatory pivot, Aggarwal noted, "was a crucial milestone, marking the beginning of India's road train project."
These trials, spanning four months and involving meticulously mapped routes, were designed to rigorously assess the real-world viability of longer vehicles navigating Indian highways. The outcomes were positive. "With the initial success, the focus has now shifted to expanding the network," Aggarwal stated. While each new route necessitates a multi-stage approval process – encompassing route mapping, regulatory clearances, and further trial runs – the expectation is that as familiarity and acceptance grow, the process will become increasingly streamlined.
The economic rationale for road trains is compelling. Saharan of Delhivery highlighted the incremental gains in efficiency that have historically accompanied each evolution in freight transport. "Traditionally, freight transportation evolved from rigid-body trucks to tractor trailers, with each step bringing incremental cost savings." The leap to road trains, he asserted, has yielded a more substantial dividend.
"The shift from tractor trailers to road trains has led to an early double-digit percentage improvement in cost per kilogram per kilometer," he explained. This quantum leap in efficiency stems from the ability of road trains to haul significantly larger payloads without a proportional increase in fuel consumption.
While fuel efficiency, measured in kilometers per liter, may experience a marginal dip, the overall efficiency, calculated against the weight of cargo moved, sees a marked improvement. For a nation striving to bring its logistics costs down from the high double-digit percentage of GDP to single-digit levels, in line with developed nations, this represents a potentially transformative shift.
Saharan acknowledged that "introducing road trains in India has not been without its challenges." One early stumbling block was navigating interactions with enforcement authorities, some of whom were initially unfamiliar with the novel vehicle configuration. Roadside inspections sometimes required extensive documentation to validate the road trains' regulatory compliance, a typical teething problem for any disruptive innovation.
As India's highway network continues to expand and the nation increasingly embraces advanced transportation paradigms, road trains look set to play a defining role in the future of its logistics ecosystem.