The milk and cattle feed service, launched in June 2023, started with 25 trucks operating daily in each direction; it now has 30 trucks. These trucks are loaded onto a freight train daily at Palanpur in Gujarat and transported to Rewari in Haryana, covering a distance of 630 km in approximately 12 hours.

After unloading at Rewari, the products are driven to their final destinations by road. Once the deliveries are completed, the empty trucks are reloaded onto the train and sent back to the originating point.

“Out of 30, 25 are milk tankers which come by road from Amul dairy in Banas to Palanpur loading point. Other 5 trucks carry different products such as vegetables, machinery, diesel oil etc,” a spokesperson of the DFCCIL said.

He added, “We provide a special coach for truck drivers to take rest throughout the journey. The 25 tankers after getting unloaded at Rewari, are driven by road to Prithala in Faridabad where Amul has another dairy to package milk and other dairy products.”

According to DFCCIL officials, earlier, while the same tankers used to reach Prithala in 30 hours from Banas dairy, the freight corridor has reduced the travel time by 20 hours, ensuring the milk’s quality remains as good as it was at the time of loading.

“We can say that people in Delhi-NCR are served better quality milk than what they were getting earlier. At the time of filling the tankers, its temperature is maintained at 2 degrees Celsius, which remains more or less the same during the 10-hour journey,” the spokesperson said.

“Besides being faster, the TOT service reduces road congestion, controls pollution and improves truck drivers’ working standards,” the official said. According to the officials, the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) have been envisaged to ensure reliable, economical, and faster transportation of goods.

The 2,843 km long corridor, passing through 56 districts in 7 states, is now 96.4% complete. “The 1,337 km long Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) runs from Ludhiana to Sonnagar, and the 1,506 km long Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) connects Dadri in Uttar Pradesh with Mumbai,” the DFCCIL officials said.

Further, he said, “EDFC is now 100% complete and operational with feeder routes to different coal mines and thermal power plants. The WDFC is also 93.2% complete with feeder routes serving various cement plants and the large ports of Mundra, Kandla, Pipavav, and Hazira in Gujarat.”