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Yodel invests £15m in green fleet

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Parcel carrier Yodel has announced a £15.2m investment in its fleet, designed to reduce the environmental impact of its road-based operations.

The investment includes new vehicles and trailers as well as technology to improve efficiency and safety.

The firm has taken delivery of an all-electric 7.5 tonne light-duty truck, the first in its fleet.

The Mitsubishi FUSO eCanter will initially be based at Yodel’s customer delivery depot in Hayes, and used across London.

It will be put through its paces to ensure that the subsequent electric vehicles are deployed in the right locations. Silent and emission-free, the state-of-the-art vehicle has a load capacity of up to four and half tonnes and is powered by six high voltage batteries.

The carrier has also invested in Microlise technology for all its tractor units and trailers, a total of more than 1,300 assets. This software monitors factors such as speed, location, and road traffic levels. It reports back to Yodel’s business control tower, allowing the team to view the network in real-time and adapt to dynamic conditions.

Microlise’s Android-based DriveTab tablet devices act as the main interface for driver communication and navigation. Journeys can be planned and monitored by the business control tower and instructions sent to the driver, while driving style can be evaluated and feedback provided to optimise performance. Yodel has already seen a seven per cent improvement in fuel efficiency since the introduction of the technology.

In addition, Yodel has fitted every tractor unit with a Microlise panic button, enabling drivers to alert the business control tower of an emergency. The carrier is also trialing a number of dashboard camera systems for its tractor units, to aid incident investigation.

Yodel is also looking to expand its urban bicycle delivery offering. It currently uses bicycle couriers to deliver parcels in central Oxford, Stevenage, Hereford and Brighton with plans to introduce them in Birmingham, London and Manchester soon.

Andrew Peeler, CEO of Yodel, said: “This large-scale investment in our fleet is designed to improve efficiency and minimise the environmental impact of deliveries. I’m delighted that we’ve introduced electric to our fleet this Spring, and we have plans to expand our use of both pedal and electric power this year.

“In addition, we have invested in technology to calculate the most efficient routes and evaluate our drivers’ driving style to further reduce our carbon footprint. 

“Our CollectPlus service helps to minimise congestion and pollution by consolidating deliveries to local stores, which customers can then pick up at their convenience. We are also striving to ensure that every home delivery is successful on the first attempt through the use of enhanced tracking and our Inflight service, which allows customers to redirect or reschedule if they realise they are going to be out when their delivery is due.”

The fleet announcement follows Yodel’s £1m investment in a bespoke semi-automated sorter at its Wednesbury site at the end of last year. The sorter, dubbed Merlin, has enhanced the speed and efficiency of sorting irregular shaped items and improved safety by reducing manual handling.

Your free VIP place at the Fleet Services Management Summit awaits

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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There’s a free VIP place reserved for you at this autumn’s Fleet Services Management Summit on November 11th & 12th.

Can you confirm you will be joining 60 senior fleet management professionals?

This unique event takes place at Whittlebury Hall, Northamptonshire.

The Summit will give you access to innovative and budget-saving suppliers for a series of pre-arranged, face-to-face meetings based on your requirements. You can also attend a series of seminars, and network with like-minded peers.

Overnight accommodation, all meal and refreshments, plus an invitation to our networking dinner, are included with your free VIP ticket.

If this would be useful for your business, please confirm your attendance here.

Places are limited, so register today or contact me to avoid disappointment.

Join your peers at the Total Supply Chain Summit

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Register today for the Total Supply Chain Summit – It’s free for you to attend and could help you reduce your expenditure by matching you up with innovative suppliers.

As one of just 60 VIP guests, you’ll be joining fellow senior supply chain, distribution, logistics and operations professionals.

Simply register here to book your free VIP place.

  • As one of our VIP guests, you will be provided with a bespoke itinerary of face-to-face meetings with suppliers based on mutual agreement. No hard sell, and no time wasted.
  • You’ll have the opportunity to attend insightful seminars and interactive workshops.
  • Network with 65+ other senior professionals who share your challenges.
  • Enjoy full hospitality throughout, including overnight accommodation, all meals and refreshments, plus an invitation to our gala dinner with entertainment

Taking place on November 4th & 5th at The Midland Hotel, Manchester, the Total Supply Chain Summit provides a platform for new business connections.

Book your place today or contact Jamie Higgs on 01992 374058 / j.higgs@forumevents.co.uk to find out more

If you are a supplier to the sector and would like to meet with senior supply chain, distribution, logistics and operations professionals who are sourcing new suppliers, contact Nick Stannard on 01992 374092 / n.stannard@forumevents.co.uk.

Wales receives £32m transport infrastructure boost

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Grants of more than £32 million have been announced by Economy and Transport Minister Ken Skates in an effort to improve transport links across Wales.

Over 100 applications were received after local authorities were invited to submit for funding, with 52 schemes selected across 21 local authorities supported by £28.8 million from the Local Transport Fund and a further £4.1 million from the Local Transport Network Fund supporting 14 schemes across 12 local authorities.

A new bus interchange costing £3.6 million has been scheduled for construction at Merthyr Tydfil, with £20 million earmarked for further public transport improvements. 

In north Wales, £3.6 million will go to improve public transport and active travel on the B5129/A548 through Flintshire and on to Deeside Industrial Park, while more than £3 million will benefit local authorities across mid and south west Wales to enhance public transport corridors and interchange.

“These grants are a substantial investment to support sustainable local economic growth, enhance public transport facilities, create and improve routes that will encourage more people in Wales to walk and cycle,” said Skates, speaking at Deeside Industrial Park where improvements were already being carried out.

“The successful projects, such as this in Deeside, are prime examples of the practical solutions we have asked the local authorities to design in order to make it easier for residents to connect with their places of employment and businesses, and to do so more sustainably.”

This investment in local transport schemes further boosts the grants announced by the Deputy Minister Lee Waters last week.

These included the allocation £19 million from the Active Travel Fund, and £10.9 million for the creation of Safe Routes in Communities and road safety schemes.

AI likely to be used to identify common fleet documents

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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The first widespread use of artificial intelligence in fleet management is likely to be to identify common documents.

That’s according to Neil Avent, IT director at FleetCheck, who explained that AI was good at looking for patterns within clearly defined boundaries, so would work well for this kind of task.

“The important factor to understand about current AI technology is that it has no innate sense of context. It works well in situations where there are a limited number of possibilities and outcomes,” said Avent.

“For example, if you give it a thousand pictures and ask it to find all the ones that include kittens, you could teach it to do this pretty effectively by providing enough examples of pictures containing a kitten.

“This is why it is likely to first find its practical use when it comes to documentation. When different sorts of document arrive into a fleet department, it could be used to simply answer a series of questions – is it an invoice? A driver’s licence? A speeding fine notification?

“AI is good at a singular type of task such as this. It can be taught to identify some of the key features of each kind of document and then place them in the appropriate queue for action with a high degree of accuracy. This saves a lot of administrative time and effort.”

However, Avent also explained that the current boundaries of AI were revealed by the fact that the technology was not currently sophisticated enough to then manage the documents.

“A separate process would be needed to know what to do with those documents in terms of the next action. That is because a more general type of software-driven intelligence, in terms of the technology available, is a long way away.

“Going back to the pictures of kittens, AI’s intelligence about kittens would end with being able to identify images. It knows nothing more about kittens than the visual characteristics of the example images containing kittens. It does not know what a kitten is.”

Several paradigm shifts would be needed before AI could take over even some quite basic fleet management processes, Avent added.

“In a sense, it is a shame that AI as a term includes the word ‘intelligence’ because it provides a very misleading picture of its capability. It has no intelligence of its own and is, in many ways, just a further development and refinement of existing IT processes that gives the illusion of intelligence to users not aware of its constraints.

“However, it does have potential for some pretty significant gains and one of the things we’ll be looking at within FleetCheck later into 2019 is how some of those can be incorporated into our fleet management software.”

SAVE THE DATE: Total Supply Chain Summit

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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The second Total Supply Chain Summit of 2019 will take place on November 4th & 5th in Manchester – Register your VIP delegate place!

Attending as one of just 60 senior supply chain professionals will enable you to:-

  • Source innovative and budget-saving suppliers
  • Attend insightful and inspirational seminar sessions
  • Network with like-minded peers
  • Enjoy complimentary overnight accommodation plus all meals and refreshments
  • Join a networking dinner with entertainment

For more information, visit http://www.totalsupplychainsummit.co.uk.

2019 fleet management buying trends revealed

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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The 60 senior fleet professionals attending this autumn’s Fleet Services Management Summit have revealed their purchasing priorities for the next 12 months.

Specifically, these buyers are looking for suppliers in the following categories (% of delegates looking for those solutions):

Accident Management – 42%

Car & Van Manufacturers – 46%

Contract Hire & Leasing (Long Term) – 38%

Contract Hire & Leasing (Short Term) – 33%

Dash Cams – 46%

Driver Training – 50%

Electric Vehicles – 75%

Fleet Management Software – 42%

Grey Fleet – 38%

Hybrid Vehicles – 63%

LPG/Alternative Fuel – 38%

Risk Management – 50%

Service, Maintenance & Repair – 42%

Tyres – 38%

Vehicle Tracking – 42%

The Fleet Services Management Summit takes place on November 11th & 12th at Heythrop Park, Oxfordshire – for more information about the event, attending as a delegate or showcasing your solutions, visit www.fleetservicessummit.co.uk.

Mentor by eDriving identifies and helps improve fleet driver behaviour

 960 640 Guest Post
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eDriving’s fleet management software helps to reduce collisions, injuries, licence endorsements and total cost of ownership through a patented closed-loop driver behaviour-based safety programme.

Having worked with fleets for almost 25 years, eDrivingSM has identified the key components required to achieve a crash-free culture®– and they comprise a closed-loop approach to driver safety that has helped eDriving’s clients successfully reduce collisions by up to 67%.

The company’s patented programme, Mentor by eDrivingSM, provides behavioural insights and actionable intelligence to help organisations build a holistic view of driver risk within a company-wide crash-free culture. 

The Mentor platform integrates data from telematics, collisions, incidents, and licence checks to provide a complete 360-degree view of driver risk. It also provides managers with tools to reduce risk and sustain driver behaviour improvements over time. The result is reduced collisions, injuries, licence endorsements and total cost of ownership. And, most importantly, the assurance that drivers return home safely to their loved ones at the end of each day. 

Broad appeal across industries and vehicle-types

At the heart of the MentorSMprogram is an innovative telematics-based app that uses smartphone sensors to collect and analyse driver behaviours most predictive of risk including acceleration, braking, cornering, speeding, and uniquely, distraction. 

As a result of eDriving’s partnership with predictive analytics and data science pioneer, FICO®, drivers are awarded an individual score that enables both drivers and managers to see positive and negative trends in performance. Poised to become the industry standard for safe driving, the FICO® Safe Driving Score has been validated to predict the likelihood of a driver being involved in a crash or incident.  

Mentor’s gamification features, such as Circles(personal groups for sharing scores), promote engagement and friendly competition among drivers, while its unique closed-loop training makes it the only safe driving programme that goes beyond scoring to focus on improving performance. Short, engaging training modules are automatically prescribed in-app for users to view any time, any place, employing a customised continuous improvement model for lasting risk reduction. 

Because Mentor requires no hardware installation, it has broad appeal across types of drivers, vehicles (motorcycles/two-wheelers, cars, trucks, and vans), applications (service, sales, and delivery fleets of all sizes), and location (currently available in 14 languages with both right-hand drive and left-hand drive training modules).

For more information email: fleet@edriving.com or visit: www.edriving.com. 

Do you specialise in Fleet Telematics? We want to hear from you!

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:

Each month on Fleet Management Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the fleet & logistics market – and in June we’ll be focussing on Fleet Telematics.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help fleet buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Fleet Telematics and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Chris Cannon on 01992 374096 / c.cannon@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering in 2019, month by month:

June – Telematics
July – Contract Hire & Leasing
August – LPG/Alternative Fuel & Fuel Management
September – Vehicle Tracking
October – Duty of Care
November – Grey Fleet
December – Service, Maintenance & Repair

For more information on any of the above, contact Chris Cannon on 01992 374096 / c.cannon@forumevents.co.uk.

EVs should be ‘only option’ by 2035

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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The UK can end its contribution to global warming within 30 years by setting an ambitious new target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said.

In its latest advisory, the Committee states that by 2035 ‘at the latest’ all new cars and vans should be electric (or use a low- carbon alternative such as hydrogen).

If possible, it says, an earlier 2030 switchover would be desirable, reducing costs for motorists and improving air quality. The Committee says this step could could help position the UK to take advantage of shifts in global markets.

It has told the Government it ‘must continue to support strengthening of the charging infrastructure, including for drivers without access to off- street parking’.

Ten years after the Climate Change Act became law, the Committee says now is the right moment to set a more ambitious goal – it asserts that achieving a ‘net-zero’ target by the middle of the century is in line with the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement; the pact which the UK and the rest of the world signed in 2015 to curb dramatically the polluting gases that cause climate change.

Scotland has greater potential to remove pollution from its economy than the UK overall, and can credibly adopt a more ambitious target of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 2045.

Wales has slightly lower opportunities than the UK as a whole, and should adopt a target for a 95% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.

The CCC says its recommended targets, which cover all sectors of the UK, Scottish and Welsh economies, are achievable with known technologies, alongside improvements in people’s lives, and should be put into law as soon as possible, the Committee says.

Falls in cost for some of the key zero-carbon technologies mean that achieving net-zero is now possible within the economic cost that Parliament originally accepted when it passed the Climate Change Act in 2008.

The Committee’s report, requested by the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments in light of the Paris Agreement and the IPCC’s Special Report in 2018, finds that:

  • The foundations are in place throughout the UK and the policies required to deliver key pillars of a net-zero economy are already active or in development. These include: a supply of low-carbon electricity (which will need to quadruple by 2050), efficient buildings and low-carbon heating (required throughout the UK’s building stock), electric vehicles (which should be the only option from 2035 or earlier), developing carbon capture and storage technology and low-carbon hydrogen (which are a necessity not an option), stopping biodegradable waste going to landfill, phasing-out potent fluorinated gases, increasing tree planting, and measures to reduce emissions on farms. However, these policies must be urgently strengthened and must deliver tangible emissions reductions – current policy is not enough even for existing targets.
  • Policies will have to ramp up significantly for a ‘net-zero’ emissions target to be credible, given that most sectors of the economy will need to cut their emissions to zero by 2050. The Committee’s conclusion that the UK can achieve a net-zero GHG target by 2050 and at acceptable cost is entirely contingent on the introduction without delay of clear, stable and well-designed policies across the emitting sectors of the economy. Government must set the direction and provide the urgency. The public will need to be engaged if the transition is to succeed. Serious plans are needed to clean up the UK’s heating systems, to deliver the infrastructure for carbon capture and storage technology and to drive transformational change in how we use our land.
  • The overall costs of the transition to a net-zero economy are manageable but they must be fairly distributed. Rapid cost reductions in essential technologies such as offshore wind and batteries for electric vehicles mean that a net-zero greenhouse gas target can be met at an annual cost of up to 1-2% of GDP to 2050. However, the costs of the transition must be fair, and must be perceived as such by workers and energy bill payers. The Committee recommends that the Treasury reviews how the remaining costs of achieving net- zero can be managed in a fair way for consumers and businesses.

Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, said: “We can all see that the climate is changing and it needs a serious response. The great news is that it is not only possible for the UK to play its full part – we explain how in our new report – but it can be done within the cost envelope that Parliament has already accepted. The Government should accept the recommendations and set about making the changes needed to deliver them without delay.”