10 Tips to Maximize Your Dedicated Fleet Investment
Dedicated fleets enable organizations to grow relationships with their most valuable customers while protecting against volatility in the open freight market. Advances in transportation technology have enabled best practices to minimize the inefficiencies that add to the cost of maintaining a dedicated fleet. Here are 10 ways to make sure you get the most out of your investment.
By Jennifer Miller, Senior Director, Operations, DHL Supply Chain and Bob Tyrrell, Senior Solution Architect, DHL Supply Chain
1. Use Best-of-Breed Software. The specific functionality required to optimize a dedicated fleet is different than that required to manage transportation flow through third-party carriers. To get the most out of your fleet, use a TMS optimized for dedicated fleet management.
2. Integrate the TMS and Fleet Management Systems. Integrating your dedicated fleet and managed transportation platforms can create value and achieve flexibility across the two operations.
3. Maximize Driver Productivity. Idle drivers can zap the efficiency of a dedicated fleet, leading to higher costs. The fleet management system gives you the tools to maximize the hours drivers are on the road while maintaining compliance with legal requirements.
4. Take a Dynamic Approach to Route Planning. Dynamic route planning can add complexity to dedicated fleet management but pays big dividends in terms of improved efficiency and lower costs.
5. Minimize Empty Miles. Filling trucks that would otherwise be traveling empty also has a big impact on dedicated fleet costs. Employing special algorithms that dynamically match capacity to available loads supported by transportation specialists who ensure load compatibility can create significant reductions in the miles your trucks are traveling empty.
6. Integrate Operations. What happens in the warehouse can affect the performance of your fleet. Taking a holistic view of warehouse and transportation operations can result in warehouse process changes that lower transportation costs.
7. Right-Size Your Fleet. Use the data and reports from the dedicated fleet system to gain the insights to make informed decisions about how and when to scale your fleet.
8. Close Visibility Gaps. Integrating geo-fencing into your visibility solution can close visibility gaps that can occur at delivery destinations.
9. Integrate Data. The next step is to bring data across managed transportation, dedicated fleet and warehousing operations into a single platform to make that data more usable for your organization and your customers. At DHL, we do this through our MySupplyChain platform.
10. Focus on Driver Quality. With a dedicated fleet, your drivers represent your brand to your customers. Recruit smartly and implement retention programs to keep your best people.
