The demand for transport is growing. That seems like good news for logistics companies. However, all that extra work has so far yielded little. In fact, because transport costs rose even faster than turnover, the return on investment decreased slightly.
In particular, fuel costs and wage costs have risen sharply. In addition, due to the growing demand for transport, logistics companies have invested extra in equipment and personnel.
The value of a route planning software
In short: the turnover in transport is growing, but the yield is decreasing. This raises several questions: How can transport companies earn more in this growing market? How can companies prevail against the competition in this highly competitive industry and still make money? And can transport companies keep their costs under control or even reduce them?
A route planning software offers a solution. It automatically distributes all orders across the fleet. The orders indicate at which location a truck must stop, and the software then calculates the optimal routes along those locations. This way, you get the most efficient transport planning and save valuable kilometres and hours.
Save on mileage
This challenge is well-known: What is the shortest route between a number of locations? With each additional location that is added to a trip, the number of possible routes grows exponentially. Things get even more complicated when more than one vehicle is involved.
No manual calculation
Manually calculating the optimal route is virtually impossible. Even a route planner that calculates and compares all options one by one needs far too much time. This is especially true for companies with a large fleet of vehicles and hundreds of delivery orders.
Many planners don’t even try to find the optimal solution anymore. They often use a simplified planning method, for example by sending the vehicles more or less to the same regions every day. And if not all orders fit into one route, the remaining orders are transferred to the routes of neighboring regions. That has long been a perhaps acceptable solution, but is acceptable still good enough?
Apart from milage, there are further savings possible. In our free eGuide you’ll learn how to save on:
- fuel costs
- toll costs
- planning time & resources
- CO2 costs