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Running on Empty
In the UK food industry, trucks on average spend just 28 per cent of their time actually running on the road and are empty on nearly 20 per cent of the distance travelled. Putting all journeys together, the average vehicle carries just over half its full potential load. This paper summarises research conducted for the UK’s Department of Transport to provide a deeper insight into the utilisation of vehicles in the food supply chain. Assessing the potential for improved utilisation can be difficult for individual firms. For example, judging the actual loading of vehicles against their maximum technical or legal carrying capacity usually sets fleet managers an unrealistically high target. A more practical yardstick is the range of average load factors achieved by companies engaged in similar distribution operations. This requires benchmarking against a standard set of key performance indicators (KPIs), preferably over the same time period and employing an identical method of data collection. The paper outlines the results of such a benchmarking exercise in the UK.
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