Staff carry materials into Wuhan Railway's first "high-speed rail freight train." /Xinhua
Double Eleven, China's annual online shopping bonanza, is just one day away. Millions of retailers hand out their biggest discounts of the year.
The ultra-high sales volume of the shopping festival leading huge express delivery demands; According to the official data from China Post, the total volume of express delivery business in China during the Double Eleven period (November 11-16) in 2019 was 2.309 billion pieces.
This year's Double Eleven has expanded its concept with another shopping window beginning on November 1.
In order to alleviate the pressure on the express delivery industry and speed up e-commerce express delivery during the festival this year, China launched a high-speed rail freight train on November 1 for the first time.
At 5:30 am on November 1, the DJ5918 "Fuxing" high-speed rail freight train set from Hankou Railway Station ( in the central Chinese city of Wuhan) with 8 carriages and a total of 40 tons of e-commerce express shipments at a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour with just "one stop" to Beijing. At the same time, another high-speed rail freight train departed from Beijing West Railway Station and arrived at Hankou Railway Station at 10:20 a.m.
The staff counts the cargo in the carriage high-speed rail freight train. /Xinhua
The freight train does not have seats in the carriages, and is equipped with anti-collision isolation panels on both sides. It is divided into two rows with three-layer blue cargo boxes printed with "High Speed Rail Express."
According to the China Railway Wuhan Bureau Group Company, the opening of the high-speed rail freight train is the latest measure to enhance the supply of bulk express delivery capacity, improve the service capacity of high-speed rail express delivery, and better meet the logistics needs of the e-commerce.
Under the normalization of the pandemic prevention and control, the country's domestic e-commerce consumption activity has gradually increased, and the express delivery business has ushered in rapid development. To this end, the railway department actively launched "high-speed rail + logistics" project to freight products and to optimize resource allocation in the express delivery industry.
At present, the "High Speed Rail Express" launched by the Wuhan Railway Department has opened 36 operating lines covering 21 large and medium-sized cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang, and Xi'an.