Do you want to save between $100k and $500k? Well you can!
It is really fantastic to be a part of the transport industry at the moment. Not only is the economy buoyant, but the media is full of good news stories too;
• The Women in Trucking initiative is in full flow, highlighting the experience of many operators; the girls are easy on the gear, great with your customers and good for team morale
• The ACC Fleet Saver initiative is getting up and running with savings of $168 per truck per year for compliant fleets
• The fuel initiative is in full marketing swing with promises of “at least” 10% fuel savings for fleets of all sizes.
Add all of this together and it is clear that the next industry cost survey could show a huge leap upwards from the current average of 1% profit to closer to 8% or even 9%! Not a bad result for an industry as large and diverse as ours.
It can be real
At CCS Logistics, we’re proud to have been supporting fleets to make such improvements since well before it was trendy to do so. Real changes and feedback we have received from our customers include;
• Up to 13% fuel savings
• A complete change in mindset throughout the company
• Morale significantly improved
• Tyre wear reduced
• Speeding tickets down by 95%
• Idling down by 40%
• Improved driver retention and a better calibre of applicant for new roles
• “A nicer place to work”
The other side of the story
What is missing from all of these good news stories is some straight talking.
• All of the fleets with the good news story have worked really hard to achieve the improvements they are so proudly describing. And rightly so.
• You can’t walk into a show and buy these savings. This is not a programme that is “done” to you
• You can’t attend a meeting once a month and accrue credits that you cash in for positive publicity at the end of the year
• Or, my personal favourite, thumping your fist on the desk and demanding savings – no, that doesn’t work either.
You have to invest money and time to make money – expect to spend $1-3 to save $5 and you may need do quite a bit of spending before you start to see savings.
Recipes for success
Maximum savings are achieved by:
• Engaging your staff
• Working as a team, involving the whole company from the directors to the storeman, from the admin team to the drivers and everyone in between.
• Buying the right trucks
• Good R&M processes
• Driver skills training
Start with a commitment to pursue savings. Nothing happens without a champion and anything worth doing is worth doing properly
• Do your research – talk to other fleets who have already got started – learn from their experience. Talk to your service providers, the ones whose opinions you genuinely value, to see how
they can help with support, tools or advice. Getting the big savings requires time, effort and a cash injection. Know what you are in for and assign resource to it.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate – tell your team what you want to achieve, what you need from them, and how you will support them to get there. Canvas their ideas – this is a team
effort after all.
• Assign a champion – someone senior enough to make decision, and who is well liked enough to help your staff to make changes
• Select an external partner as your mentor to navigate your way to savings
o If you don’t have much spare capacity in house, you’ll need someone you can lean on quite heavily – again choose someone you like and respect.
o Conversely if you are able to appoint multiple in house champions, you are looking more for someone with a bit of experience to help you to avoid the most expensive pitfalls and dead
ends, to steer you towards quick wins, then long term savings
Here at CCS Logistics, we are in the process of refreshing our management skill sets. Lesson 1 in the course is “Goal Setting;”
– What are you going to achieve?
– How are you going to achieve it?
If your “what” is to save $100k – $500k in the coming months, look beyond the media hype to understand “how” to approach making those savings in a sustainable way that will work for you.