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Empty running remains an issue for food deliveries
Page 14
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DfT figures show that customer and local authority constraints on deliveries into town centres hurt efficiency and productivity in the food and drirKs market. Roanna Avison reports.
RESEARCH INTO THE transport issues surrounding the delivery of food and drink show there are big differences in efficiencies depending on how far down the supply chain you look.
Speaking at Scala's annual logistics debate at Wroxhall Abbey near Coventry last week, John Perry, managing director of Scala Logistics, said the firm had undertaken a survey on behalf of the D1T to measure the key performance indicators.The survey looked at 109 fleets with almost 9,000 vehicles covering 1.3 million kilometres a day and considered data on vehicle fill, empty running, time utilisation, deviations from schedule and fuel consumption.
The transport sector was divided into primary, which covers food and delivery to retailer RDCs; secondary, which is the carriage of food from RDCs to stores: and tertiary, which is mainly drinks and deliveries into pubs and restaurants. -The big primary and secondary suppliers spread the work very well over seven days and particularly make good use of Sunday, while weekend deliveries are almost non-existent in the tertiary space." Perry says.
"When we looked at which fleets were operating over 24 hours, we found that primary fleets used the whole 24 hours, secondary fleets' productivity dropped by about a third on the night shift and tertiary was almost non-existent at night: Perry says the reasons given for this were customer and local authority constraints on deliveries into town centres.
The research also showed that average vehicle fill is about 75%. "The reasons given include delivery windows, customer constraints on pallet heights and product stacking issues," Perry says.
Despite efforts to reduce empty running, the research shows it still accounts for 24% of all kilometres for food and 20% for drink. "There's a lot of talk about food miles,which is the distance travelled per pallet delivered,Perry says. "For primary and secondary deliveries, the average is between 3km and 13km per pallet, while for tertiary it works out at 14-50km.
-The reason for this is that smaller vehicles are generally used for tertiary deliveries."
The other area highlighted by the research is delays. While congestion was mentioned, the biggest factors in causing delays to freight were issues at loading or customer delivery. Perry says these "far outweigh traffic issues".