For transport and logistics businesses that operate on tight margins, the challenges of managing fleets, routes, and freight can make or break profitability. One of the most overlooked aspects of this is truck underutilisation—whether it’s empty trips, partially filled trucks, or inefficient route planning, these factors can eat into your bottom line.
This article will explore how these challenges impact profitability and how transport management software tailored to your business can help solve these issues, giving your business a competitive edge.
The High Cost of Empty Trips
Empty trips are a major drain on resources in the transport and logistics industry. Whether it’s a truck returning empty after making a delivery or being partially filled for both legs of the journey, these inefficiencies result in lost revenue and higher operational costs.
That being said, these empty trips often go unnoticed due to fragmented systems that don’t provide a bird’s eye view of the entire operation. A truck may be half full, while another truck is dispatched to the same region — both running below capacity and wasting resources. Without a unified system in place, planners cannot effectively match loads or optimise routes.
This is where Infocomm Software comes into play. By providing a holistic view of your entire logistics operation, our software can assist planners in maximising truck utilisation by optimising load matching. This means fewer empty trips, better use of fleet resources, and ultimately, higher profits.
For instance, if Truck A is half full, our TMS can identify if there’s a load from nearby Location B that can fill up the rest of the Truck A’s capacity, and prevent Truck B from making the trip and also being half full itself.
Fuel Costs and Their Impact on Profitability
The rising cost of fuel has added another layer of complexity to running a profitable logistics business. Trucks that are running empty or partially filled but consuming fuel are burning through profits. This is why optimising truck utilisation is not only about space but also about minimising fuel consumption.
Our transport software helps streamline routes to avoid unnecessary trips and fuel wastage. It prevents situations where two trucks are sent along similar routes when one could manage both deliveries. By optimising routes and consolidating loads, you can reduce fuel consumption and improve trip efficiency, reducing:
- Trip time
- Fuel use
- Carbon emissions
As well as this, by seeing all your planned routes in one place, you will be able to prevent trucks “double backing” by going back and forth over similar routes to complete deliveries, when there could be a more direct route to take, resulting in shorter travel times and less fuel used.
How Infocomm’s Software Optimises Truck Utilisation
While we’ve already touched on some of the solutions above, let’s dive deeper into how Infocomm’s software can optimise truck utilisation and improve profitability.
Maximising Load Capacity
First and foremost, our software maximises load capacity by helping planners ensure that trucks are filled to their maximum potential. This significantly reduces the occurrence of empty trips or partially filled trucks. Planners can view the entire fleet’s status and locations in real time, enabling them to allocate resources more efficiently.
Optimising Load Consolidation
Additionally, our software can alert planners to potential opportunities for load consolidation. For instance, if a truck is heading to a location and there’s freight scheduled to return along the same route, you will be able to see where you can consolidate the freight onto that one truck. This prevents a separate trip from being scheduled, reducing operational costs and fuel usage.
Considering Rules Around Transportation
Infocomm’s software also considers the rules surrounding the transportation of goods, such as restrictions on dangerous goods. These rules can be tailored to you, and trigger alerts if incompatible items are scheduled to be loaded onto the same truck. This reduces the risk of logistical errors and enhances safety compliance.
As you can see, when we tailor our software to your business – it can help you schedule freight in the most optimal way, ensuring that trucks are used to their maximum capacity, even on return journeys. By doing so, you can significantly reduce the number of trips and cut operational costs to improve your profitability and ultimately move more with the same or less.
Do You Need Transport Software to Maximise Truck Utilisation and Profits?
Inefficiencies such as empty trips, high fuel costs, and underutilised trucks are common challenges in the logistics industry. These inefficiencies can erode profits, create bottlenecks, and increase the workload on your team. However, with the right transport optimisation software, businesses can overcome these hurdles and transform their operations.
Infocomm’s Software provides a transport software solution tailored to your business, that integrates with your existing systems and customised to to meet your unique business needs.
Whether you operate in freight management or 3PL business, our software can help you maximise truck utilisation, reduce fuel consumption, and increase profits. Contact Infocomm today for a demo of our transport management software and see how we can help you streamline your logistics operation, minimise empty trips, and boost your profitability.