PAYING
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Backloads are not a luxury they often make the difference between failure and success. Ensuring your vehicles run loaded whenever possible is the first and golden rule of haulage: David Taylor looks at ways to promote maximum vehicle utilisation.
n a perfect world, every outward load would come with its companion backload so your vehicles would never run half-laden or, horror of horrors, empty. But life is not like that so hauliers must spend a lot of their precious time hustling for work that will allow them to bring their vehicles back from each delivery with a revenue-earning return load.
The best most hauliers can hope for is that their outward load pays for the round trip so any backload is pure profit. But in these days of high vehicle excise duty and astronomic fuel costs, backloads are increasingly vital to the viability of the whole exercise.
"It is an economic necessity," says Mick Jackson, head of logistics with the Freight Transport Association. "The latest Lex Transfleet Report shows that 39% of all vehicles above 3.5 tonnes have more than half their capacity filled on their return journey and that about 15% are full to capacity." Of course backloads have always been a core element of efficient road transport, as Jackson says: "Telling hauliers all about backloads is a bit like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs."
True enough—but efficient backloading is not a simple matter: the number of variables involved can make it a delicate balancing act. In fact, if you can get the revenue on the outward run, the most economic option might actually be to bring the vehicle back empty, says Dean Keep, customer services manager with Manchester-based haulier AK Worthington.
Certain radius
Keep explains that AK Worthington will always look for backloads on a long run, but within a certain radius of the depot it is barely worth it: "Anything south of Birmingham it's normally worth getting a return load. But suppose I'm getting boo to take a load to Birmingham. I'd get, maybe, Liso for a return load. That's OK if I'm coming straight back to Manchester with it. But I've got to go somewhere in the Birmingham area to collect the load and then maybe deliver it somewhere else the following day. That's L75 to col lect in Birmingham and 175 to tip it the next day. If that takes all morning, I'm getting only £75 for half a day." Keep's advice is to accept backloads only if you can fit them in around what is already planned. The reason, of course, is that backloads do not deliver premium rates because they are invariably supplied by other hauliers rather than end users. It is a
mechanism for relieving excess workload c one haulier and maximising utilisation fi another. Clearly the haulier supplying the loz will want some profit from the arrangemer so the returning haulier accepts a reduced rat
Successful backloading therefore depem upon co-operation between hauliers, at many firms develop relationships with fell hauliers in key locations to which they mal frequent runs. This arrangement has her refined by various organisations which rt: what amount to clearing houses for retut loads. In recent years, there has been a crop Internet-based enterprises which adverti! return loads for a fee.
Clearing houses
The FTA's Mick Jackson warns that becau! many of these clearing houses act as audio: eers, rates tend to get depressed. But he say there are some which operate more with ti haulier in mind and offer a range of service including underwriting credit. Some will evc help the haulier by calculating if a particul. backload is economically worthwhile.
One organised backloading network th really works is the Transport Associatic (TA), a long-established "club" for mediur sized hauliers which has recently launch its own on-line service. Newcastle upon Tyn based haulier Simpson Bros is one of ti TA's 7o-odd carefully vetted members; oper tions manager Brian Paisley says life wou be a lot harder without it.
"People are queuing up to join ft. Transport Association because it's a fabuloi idea," he says. "Suppose we've got a vehicle: Bristol and it breaks down. We'll ring our 'I member down there and they will try source us a vehicle and put ours in their wor shop. They'll treat it like their own." Ti Transport Association will also source bac loads; a service which has now gone on-lin "Backloads are an absolute must," sa: Paisley. "Anybody who doesn't get backloac is either getting an unbelievable rate or is warehousing as well as transport." Simpsc Bros has found one way of guaranteeing ft trucks on both legs of a trip: "We run plast bottles out of the North-East to the top Scotland and then return with the same bc ties filled with milk." Backloading direct fro: the customer is relatively rare, but Paisley sa. it's something Simpson Bros always looks o. for: "We will say to the company we're delivc ing to 'Why not give us an outward load? makes sense to us and it will reduce the nur ber of vehicles coming and going'."
For general hauliers, running fleets flatbeds or curtainsiders, backloading is part of the deal. More specialist haulierstanker operators carrying foodstuffs or cher icals, for example—simply cannot accept tl risk of contamination posed by picking I another load on the return journey.
Similarly, fleets of 3.5-tonners makir multi-drop deliveries within a 50-mile radii of base will seldom seek backloads—it does/ make economic sense. But for the gener haulier trunking arhcs or rigids up and dow the motorway network, it's madness if you' not carrying a load on both carriageways,