How does your company use GPS? Try using it not only to manage miles and fuel for your truck fleet, but to measure customer activity and get more ‘quality’ stops in each day.
If your company appears to keep busy, have you stopped to calculate actual costs for delivery? Do you think about a ‘quality’ stop when you schedule?
Here’s a great example from an article (link at the end) we’d like to share:
Example 1
A distributor plans a 64-mile route—32 miles out, 32 miles back—to make an $80 delivery with a $20 profit margin on the goods being delivered. The minimum fleet cost to deliver any product or service on a 64 mile trip is $0.50 per mile, so this trip has a net loss of at least $12.
The distributor just paid the customer $12 to deliver the product to them.
To avoid truck routes like the above, it’s suggested to create a profile for each customer and group them according to their order frequency. Those customers with frequent orders should be grouped and served at ‘greater net profit inclusive of the physical delivery costs.’
Other steps to take to be more efficient are to measure the average miles per customer visit and include engine diagnostics. Make sure your truck engine diagnostic tools include the ability to capture VIN, mileage, voltage, oil and active engine faults.
When measurement technologies are used, then strategic decisions can be made on how resources will be directed for sales, delivery, technical and support.
Here’s an Action Plan from the article:
- Record, measure as much as you can.
- Review how time is spent including commuting to work, while driving and with customers.
- Set goals based not solely on daily miles driven but on reducing the average number of miles per priority customer visit and measuring fuel consumed per customer trip.
- Monitor goals and communicate positive results with employees.
- Repeat steps 1 to 4.
For a more in-depth look at using GPS for making efficient deliveries with your trucking fleet, read this article by Colin Sutherland, from Automotive Fleet
