Notes on carbon markets and industrial transition
A selection of the reporting, mapping and field work behind the magazine. Each entry links to the full method note, transcript or chart set that ran with it.
Road leg split
Gradient, idling and load splits pulled from a month of telematics on the Johannesburg to Durban run.
Rail and terminal
Two operators, one coal line, two different carbon numbers. Where the factor choice moves the result.
Fleet practice
Field notes from two Gauteng hauliers who replaced annual training with monthly data reviews.
From a shared spreadsheet passed between three fleet engineers to a corridor-level publication read by planners, auditors and depot managers across Gauteng and the Western Cape.
March 2021
A four-page memo on diesel burn along the Johannesburg–Durban rail spine was emailed to eleven logistics planners. Most of them replied with corrections, which became the working method we still use.
September 2021
Two operators on the same coal line were reporting carbon numbers that differed by nearly a third. We put both factor sets side by side and showed where the assumptions diverged.
June 2022
A run of method notes on missing pings, idling misclassification and odometer drift. Written after three hauliers handed over raw exports and asked why their reported tonne-kilometres kept shifting.
February 2023
Field notes from short-haul battery trials in Gauteng and a gas pilot on the N1. Range, payload penalties and charging downtime recorded as they happened, not as the brochures described them.
November 2023
Two Gauteng fleets replaced annual training with monthly data-led conversations. We followed the cycle for six months and published what survived contact with real schedules.
April 2024
The review moved to a weekly send. Readers now file corridor tips directly to the editors, and several of those tips have turned into full method notes.
Who we are
Carbon Corridor is written for logistics planners, fleet engineers and sustainability officers who have to attach real numbers to diesel litres and tonne-kilometres. Not a consultancy, not a certification body. We sit between the spreadsheet and the corridor and write down what the figures actually say.
Our beat is South African freight. The Johannesburg–Durban rail spine, coal and container flows through Richards Bay, road leg splits on the N3 and N1, and the inland depots where loads get consolidated before they move. Each corridor gets its own notes, because a national average hides more than it explains.
We publish emission factor updates, electric and gas truck trials, telematics data quality checks, driver coaching that shifts fuel burn, and method notes for small hauliers in Gauteng and the Western Cape who report without a full-time analyst. Expect spreadsheets, interview transcripts and the occasional blunt column about claims that do not survive an audit.
Transport Carbon Review started as a shared spreadsheet between a fleet engineer in Gauteng and a rail planner who kept arguing about the same N3 diesel figures. The notes grew into a weekly dispatch, then into a magazine with corridor files, method pages and interview transcripts.
First year
The early work was narrow on purpose: build a defensible tonne-kilometre baseline for the Johannesburg-Durban spine, then test it against telematics pulls from three mid-size hauliers. Most of that year went into cleaning idling records and reconciling load splits, not into publishing.
Second year
Coal and container flows through Richards Bay pushed us into emission factor selection. Two operators on the same line were reporting different carbon numbers for comparable activity. We published the comparison, kept the working sheets open, and started asking operators which assumptions they could actually defend in a third-party review.
Third year
Annual driver training rarely moved fuel burn. We followed two Gauteng fleets that replaced it with monthly telematics reviews and route-specific feedback, then documented what held up and what got dropped when real dispatch pressure arrived. The result was a smaller cycle that fits a working fleet.
Now
A growing share of our readers run five to forty trucks in the Western Cape and Gauteng without a dedicated sustainability officer. Recent method notes focus on reporting that a transport manager can maintain between loads, using the telematics and fuel records already on hand.