Haulage Insight – turning the industry's biggest challenges into BIG opportunities

We recently spoke to our customers in the haulage industry to discover the challenges they are facing today.

Feedback revealed that rising maintenance costs, sky high insurance premiums and the driver shortage are becoming real concerns. Questions were also raised about the unpredictable cost of fuel and how CO2 responsibility will frame the future of the industry. Here we discuss the top 5 fears highlighted in our survey, and how you can utilise technology to turn them into BIG opportunities.

Managing Maintenance Costs

Almost all of the customers surveyed highlighted that the cost of keeping vehicles on the road is increasing, as the price for repairs continues to grow and the technology within vehicles gets ever more complex.

It was particularly interesting that the costs associated with 'non-planned' events were the primary concern, largely due to the impact they had on vehicle off road (VOR) time and the associated costs.

So how can you turn rising maintenance costs into an opportunity for your business? The key, is to reduce the volume of 'non-planned' events and ensure that your business is incurring fewer costs than your competition. Keeping costs down will enable you to price more competitively whilst maintaining margin. Below are three steps you can take to help reduce 'non-planned' events.

• Start to measure VOR time. You should measure planned, unplanned and the ratio between the two. The objective is to increase the weighting of planned VOR time.
• Utilise maintenance management software to proactively identify maintenance needs. If integrated with telematics maintenance requirements can be automatically flagged based on time or mileage.

• Monitor driver behaviour. Ensure your vehicles are being driven responsibly and consistently, so you can plan maintenance needs effectively across your entire fleet.

Insurance Premiums

Our customers highlighted that they are seeing insurance costs increase to a point where they are now competing with fuel and wages as the biggest cost for fleet owners.

Unfortunately, there is often no quick fix for rising insurance premiums. When it comes to managing this cost you need to take the long-term view of building a safety culture within your business and demonstrate to your insurer that you are taking proactive steps to improve fleet safety and incident rates, the root cause of premium increases.

Taking this long-term view, will result in fewer incidents, an improved claims history and long lasting premium reductions.

Keeping your premium per vehicle below your competition will give you a significant edge, below we highlight three steps our customers have taken to improve their insurance premiums.

• Demonstrate the use of driver behaviour monitoring technology and how this is used to reduce road risk, see example driver scorecard report from Navman Wireless.

• Demonstrate that you are acting on driver behaviour information by structuring training programmes around individual driver needs.

• Use in-cab cameras, and demonstrate the ability to protect your business from false claims, see example video courtesy of Smart Witness

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pxJQpIBNE[/video]

Fuel costs

Feedback from our customers indicated that the recent drop in fuel prices has made managing the cost of fuel easier, but the unpredictable nature of fuel pricing keeps the cost of fuel as a primary concern across the industry.

So how can you turn the unpredictable price of fuel into an opportunity? Our advice, is to forget about what you can't control and put your energy into identifying and improving the critical behaviours that contribute to high levels of fuel spend. By continually improving key metrics, such as idle time, excessive acceleration and over rpm, you are putting your business in a position to keep fuel spend lower than your competitors, irrespective of the price at the pump. Our customers have successfully implemented the three techniques below to effectively control their fuel spend.

• Implement driver league tables to incentivise efficient driving. If using telematics, customisable scorecard reports, like the one below capture these core metrics, and aggregate a total performance score.

• Utilise real-time driver training aids and give live feedback to drivers, to help them understand the exact behaviours that contribute to inefficient driving.

• Create training programmes based on an individual's needs and ensure your investment is focussed on high impact areas.

Driver shortage

A number of respondents highlighted the threat of a looming driver shortage as an area of concern, more specifically the challenges this creates with recruitment, training and retention.

Recruitment in any industry is always a challenge and when the labour market is depleted it is made even more difficult. But the emergence of Generation Y (individuals aged 18 to 32) as a core workforce demographic, presents an opportunity for your business to get a step ahead your competition in the labour market. We recently published an infographic about how to create a business that is a talent magnet for young drivers, (https://www.navmanwireless.co.uk/blog/2014/12/09/forget-the-robotic-truck-the-immediate-future-is-generation-y/), the summary of our advice is below:

• Gen Y are proud to be associated with a business with a great reputation - ensure your social responsibility policies are in place and shout about your businesses success.

• Create a smart technology environment - become synonymous with investing in the latest technology, and don't be afraid to communicate how you are using technology to develop your business.

• Fuse telematics with your working culture and demonstrate how vehicle connectivity will make their lives easier.

CO2

Our survey results showed that the haulage industry are feeling the increased scrutiny of their operations as part of the environmental agenda. With pressure coming from both government and customers, reducing emissions is becoming an important issue, but being green brings big business benefits too!

Fleets which strive to lower CO2 emissions, are in turn reducing their fuel consumption, improving efficiency and realising cost savings.

What could be perceived as additional unwanted pressure, is actually an opportunity to make your fleet more efficient and for your business to realise long-term cost savings. Below are three actions you can take to get your green agenda on track.

• Measure your carbon output - before you can start to improve you need to measure where your current carbon output. If you have telematics installed you can utilise automated carbon reporting but other resources are available such as www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx.

• Ensure that unnecessary vehicle mileage and idling is identified and removed from your business. Simple trip and idle reports from vehicle tracking software can really simplify the process.

• Improve driver behaviour - the Road Haulage Association estimate that improvements in driver style can have up to 10% positive impact on MPG and carbon footprint. Integrating telematics and driver training is a proven combination that will see efficient driving run across your entire fleet.

If you share any of these challenges, contact us today and have a chat with our team bout how our technology can turn them into BIG opportunities for your business.