These firms lease freight cars from the Russian State Railways and provide conventional freight carriage, refrigerated service, and open freight cars to all Siberian cities with rail service. Siberian Transport, Siberian Express, and Shirl are among the the most highly regarded. It's hard to get an accurate figure on shipping times, but exporters should err on the side of caution. In general, shipping times by train from Moscow are 4-5 days shorter than from St. Petersburg, since goods traveling from St. Petersburg travel through Moscow and are delayed in railyards there. Trucking is seldom used to ship goods to Siberia, although a number of Western and Russian trucking companies serve the region's major cities.
Service is relatively expensive and the roads into Siberia are bad.
As a result, trucks carry only a small volume of very high-value products which are too heavy for airfreight and which would spoil too quickly for rail. Warehousing It is often cheaper for a Siberian consumer-products distributor to buy imported goods in Moscow from an intermediary than to import directly. For various reasons, effective customs rates are substantially lower in Moscow than in other cities. Not surprisingly, Moscow importers also can make very large purchases and take advantage of volume discounts not available to smaller regional distributors. The availability of good-quality, secure warehousing is limited in Siberian cities.