Migros is committed to using rail transport: with an annual domestic freight volume of over a million tonnes, Migros is SBB Cargo’s biggest customer . More than 400 railway wagons run on the rails for Migros every day. All Regional Cooperatives of Migros, all major industrial plants as well as the distribution centres in Suhr, Neuendorf and Volketswil have their own rail connections.
The percentage of rail transport keeps on growing. In 2009 Migros transported 186'500'000 tonne-kilometres (tkm, see footnote) of goods by rail – an increase of 0.3 per cent (+554,985 tkm). Never before has Migros shipped so many goods by rail.

This new growth was driven mainly by the Migros distribution centre in Neuendorf which most recently added the Neuchâtel site of the Migros Neuchâtel/Fribourg Cooperative to the list of those – Geneva, Vaud and Ticino – which receive their non-food and near-food shipments exclusively by rail. In autumn 2009, the Suhr distribution centre also switched to rail transport for all of its food deliveries to the Geneva Cooperative.

The environment comes first on the road as well

Migros has also taken ecological measures with its fleet of lorries. Since its completion in 2008, the national transport logistics improvement project has led to higher loads per haul and more efficient transport routes and, in 2009, led to a slight decline in the number of kilometres travelled by lorry. Furthermore, the constant renewal of the vehicle fleet in favour of more environmentally friendly lorries of the Euro 4 and Euro 5 emissions categories has reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 40% per cent since 2005.

All Cooperatives regularly hold Eco-Drive training courses on energy-saving and economic driving; 82% of all drivers attended an Eco-Drive course in 2009. Migros Cooperative Basel  even went a step further in 2008, creating an incentive system which rewards drivers for economic driving – and which in 2009 achieved a 38`000 decline in fuel consumption on the previous year.
Also in 2009, Migros held its first-ever Eco-Drive courses for 150 third-party drivers.

When acquiring new company vehicles, more and more Cooperatives are going for green technology in the shape of gas or hybrid vehicles. The use of alternative fuels such as biogas from organic waste, biodiesel from recyclable vegetable oils and rapeseed methyl ester (RME) dropped in 2009, however, as very few fuels on the market met the Migros requirements for a favourable environmental audit.

Footnote Tonne-kilometre:
Tonne-kilometre (tkm) is a unit of measurement for freight transport. Tkm is calculated by multiplying the quantity transported (tonnes) by the distance travelled (kilometres).