retail Archives - Fleet Summit
Posts Tagged :

retail

How retail fleet managers can improve sustainability and profitability in home delivery 

 1024 601 Stuart O'Brien
By:

Today, home delivery and sustainability are coming together in consumers’ minds. Descartes recently conducted a comprehensive study to help retailers understand not only how this convergence is changing consumer home delivery preferences; but also how retailers can take advantage of these evolving preferences to help themselves and the environment. 

The good news is that consumers are becoming more flexible about their delivery choices. They want retailers to provide sustainable delivery options; and favour retailers that are focused on sustainability. 

The even better news is that most of the sustainable delivery options come at a lower cost for retailers to operationalise, compared with traditional deliveries. This presents a strong opportunity for retailers to create more customer loyalty and to reduce delivery costs, while helping the environment. Chris Jones, EVP, Descartes explains and reveals key findings from Descartes’ recent research….

The demand for “eco-friendly” home delivery is strong

The study surveyed 8,013 consumers from nine countries in Europe, the US and Canada. It pointed to a number of findings that indicate that many consumers care about the environment and what retailers do about it does impact their buying decisions. The last finding in the list below is a significant one for retailers because it helps to drive the first three metrics:

  • 45% said that helping the environment is quite/very important in their daily lives
  • 39% said that they always/regularly make purchasing decisions based upon the environmental impact of a company or a product
  • 40% would buy more from grocers who demonstrated that their supply chains were more sustainable than the competition
  • 50% were quite/very interested in environmentally friendly home delivery options.

Three sustainable delivery options were highly appealing to consumers

Respondents were asked what sustainable delivery options were most important to them. The following findings point to the three most appealing sustainable delivery options for consumers—all of which can reduce costs for retailers:

  • 50% thought the ability to combine orders to have them arrive all at once was quite/very important
  • 48% said that they were quite/very interested in having retailers recommend the most environmentally friendly delivery option
  • 38% were quite/very willing to wait longer for deliveries to make them more environmentally friendly.

Making sustainable delivery happen

Achieving these three sustainable delivery options allows retailers to better consolidate deliveries and increase delivery density. The key to leveraging eco-friendly delivery options, though, is to understand which are more sustainable, and present them to customers before they make a delivery decision.

Specialised delivery appointment scheduling tools can help here, and provide retailers the capabilities to highlight the most environmentally friendly delivery options to their shoppers – for example, options for dates and times that are ecofriendly across different service levels, including free standard delivery, premium delivery or same day delivery. These intelligent scheduling tools can dynamically offer services that combine deliveries too – and they can present options that extend the delivery time (e.g. slow down the delivery) to create more environmentally delivery plans. These options combine to help create more efficient and profitable delivery operations for retailers, and reduce their carbon footprint.

Combining deliveries 

For retailers such as grocers and broadline sellers whose customers make frequent purchases, combining orders provides an excellent opportunity to minimise the number of deliveries. Retailers can provide either a fixed delivery on a regular basis (e.g. Amazon Prime Day) or dynamically choose the day based upon existing orders. Strong delivery appointment scheduling tools can identify when customers have existing orders and, during the ordering process for additional purchases, determine if it is possible to add new orders to the existing delivery or dynamically suggest a new delivery time. For customers on a fixed delivery schedule, this techology can assign new orders to the fixed time as long as the solution determines that it is feasible to add them to the delivery.

Scoring eco-delivery options 

For retailers who want to provide customers with more dynamic eco-friendly delivery options, intelligent delivery appointment scheduling tools can score options based upon the factors that determine carbon footprint. This is usually possible to achieve because the delivery appointment scheduling process dynamically creates delivery options for each order as customers are making their purchases. With today’s modern tools they can typically score options to show which ones have the shortest travel distance/lowest mileage and enable retailers to determine which options they want to present to the customer. Eco-deliveries can be highlighted with supplemental explanation (e.g. “Help us reduce miles and improve the environment”) to educate the customer. Anecdotally, some organisations employing this technique have seen mileage reductions of up to 20% for eco-deliveries versus non-eco-friendly delivery options.

Lengthening lead times for deliveries

Similar to eco-deliveries, effective delivery appointment scheduling tools can score delivery options over a time horizon. This provides retailers the insight to understand what longer lead-time options are more environmentally friendly and present them to the customer during the buying process.

Additional performance and sustainability improvement tactics

Virtually any improvement in home delivery performance results in a lower carbon footprint and greater sustainability. While scheduling tools offer retailers tangible benefits, there are several other tactics that retailers can deploy to improve home delivery performance and make it more sustainable.

  1. Route optimisation that helps to maximise fleet productivity, which results in less fuel consumed, fewer vehicles used and lower vehicle maintenance.
  2. Advanced road network modeling that helps to ensure compliance with state and local government restrictions in congested areas, which reduces traffic and related pollution.
  3. Route orchestration to better coordinate multiple resources during delivery execution, which reduces fuel consumed and the number of vehicles deployed and maintained. AI and machine learning capabilities improves route planning accuracy and addresses route execution exceptions to make delivery fleets more productive, reduce fuel consumed and decrease the number of vehicles deployed and maintained.
  4. Mobile applications that eliminate paper-based delivery documentation and IoT-based telematics that minimize excessive idle time and help contain aggressive driving traits that consume additional fuel and increase vehicle maintenance.
  5. GPS-based fleet tracking, that reduces vehicle turnaround and idle time at distribution centers and depots, can be used.
  6. Customer delivery notifications can help to decrease the number of failed deliveries and the need to reschedule.

Conclusion

Sustainability is no longer a challenge. It is an opportunity. For retailers to continue to succeeding in this current challenging business environement, while meeting consumers’ expectations, they will need to consider what their shoppers want in terms of delivery options against agains sustainability requirements.

Today, meeting these needs is not only good business sense – investors want it, consumers want it, and governmental legislation across the planet is driving and demanding it too. By investing in technologies that enable effective transport routing, scheduling and delivery resourcing, retailers will be able to meet the various needs of their shoppers, the environment, and the market that they operate it.

How delivery drivers became the centerpiece of the heatwave crisis

 960 640 Guest Post
By:

By Andrew Tavener, Head of Marketing, Descartes

This year, the UK has become subject to heatwaves of record-breaking temperatures, widely attributed to  climate change. Over the next week, parts of the UK are expected to hit highs of 30 degrees once again, encouraging many of the general public to stay indoors, work from home and choose their day outs in moderation.

However, for some there is no choice but to endure the heat, despite official warnings and the last few weeks have not been kind to last mile logistics, with some reports of negligence amongst retailers and their lack of air conditioning in vehicles, down to reasons seemingly as illegitimate as weight issues. During last month’s heatwave, one last mile delivery driver actually collapsed after enduring unbearable conditions.

Heatwaves in the UK are here to stay, so it’s time we looked at how we can adapt fleet management practices, and take better care of our drivers.

A duty of care

Despite a reluctance to implement solutions such as air conditioning in home delivery vans, retailers still have a duty of care when it comes to their workers. From an HR and legal perspective, this becomes even more concerning when there’s a driver shortage.

If they think they’re being driven hard in extreme conditions, workers may be forced to leave their current company and seek employment elsewhere. These businesses therefore should look to retain their employees in any way possible and prevent them from adding detriment to their health when it could be easily avoided.

On top of this, vehicles are more susceptible to issues in extreme weather; drivers have been warned of fires or exploding tyres, so vehicle safety checks need to be up to scratch. This includes checking the vehicle fluids and ensuring they are getting service checks regularly or if the driver suspects that something is wrong.

Embracing the night shift

Even during the peak of summer in the UK, most delivery drivers are expected to work during daylight hours – just as they would during any other month of the year. By comparison, in Spain it’s common for people to work after 4pm because of the temperatures. Perhaps one fleet management solution could be a complete reshuffle of what’s expected in the UK when we’re encroaching on a heatwave; if delivery drivers were enabled to work during the cooler hours of the day and into the evening, the domino-effect would include an easier, cooler environment alongside less congested roads and improved environmental impact.

Since the pandemic, working habits have changed substantially, with many people still working from home or having access to flexible timetables or working hours. On the road, we live in an increasingly congested environment, where the working days could do with a complete overhaul. Not only does this make things easier for delivery drivers, but for each and everybody on the road. Less traffic means less pollution and accidents; and happier workers.

The intervention of innovations in crisis

Some retailers are still behind when it comes to extreme temperatures. If air conditioning isn’t a viable solution in a delivery van then perhaps there are other ways to reduce the struggle for delivery drivers working in these recent hot temperatures.

Alongside factoring in the setbacks caused by such heat, including less productivity and the risks to health, these major players in retail need to be able to understand such complexities before they know how to address them. For example, self-scheduling technologies have been used to improve parts of the process like route density and delivery productivity.

With access to more transport intelligence such as inventory, information, and assets that enable driver efficiency, companies will be able to respond to rapidly changing environmental factors as well as changing market and regulatory conditions, in turn adequately supporting their employees and better serve customers.

A cleaner, greener fleet – How Asda is reducing emissions through driver engagement 

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:

Partnering with Lightfoot – the UK’s leading provider of in-cab driver coaching and engagement technology – has helped Asda on its journey towards net-zero, with the supermarket now saving an incredible 2,482 tonnes of CO2 per year through its grocery delivery fleet.

It’s all down to the unique technology offered by British green-tech company Lightfoot, which provides real-time feedback for safer, more efficient driving; and a rewards-based system to incentivise and engage drivers from the get-go. Many Asda drivers are now using their Lightfoot app on a daily basis and have already won prizes including an Amazon Echo Dot and a mini drone, as well as cash prizes totalling over £13,213.

Learn more about Asda’s sustainability journey

Can electric vans keep up with the pressuring demands of online shopping?

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:

The courier sector is currently experiencing two major consumer demands – an ever-increasing expectation for rapid delivery times, and a growing concern for greener methods. Balancing these two requirements has been difficult, and the recent pandemic has only amplified the pressure, with more parcels and packages heading out onto the roads than ever before.

Couriers are ramping up their fleet numbers with van leasing and sending out more drivers to meet this surging demand.

In terms of bringing couriers onto a greener road, electric vehicles are often touted as the way forward. But are electric fleets ready to keep up with current demands?

The demand for doorstep deliveries

Even before the pandemic, shipping levels were increasing year on year. According to the Pitney Bowes 2019 Parcel Shipping Index, global parcel shipping surpassed a staggering 100 billion in volume for the first time that year. The same report predicted that parcel volumes would double by 2026 to reach 220–262 billion – and that was before the pandemic accelerated customer demand for home deliveries across the board.

With so many more parcels being posted and many UK shoppers expecting orders placed before 4:43pm to be delivered the next day, couriers are having to work harder than ever before. It’s vital that their vehicles can keep up. So, how do the fleets of the biggest UK couriers shape up in the modern day?

A slow transformation

The top five most popular UK couriers are:

  1. Royal Mail (52.7%)
  2. Hermes (16.1%)
  3. DPD Group (14.2%)
  4. Parcelforce (4.7%)
  5. DHL (4.1%)

The Royal Mail operates 41,000 delivery and collection vans, alongside an additional 10,000 vehicles such as lorries and heavy goods vehicles. Currently, the firm’s massive fleet contains just 300 electric vehicles, though it plans to add another 3,000. This would take the percentage of its fleet running on electricity from just 0.58% to 6.47%.

DPD shows a slightly stronger input, with a recent order of 750 more electric vehicles bringing its total to 1,700 within its fleet of over 10,000 vehicles. This would increase its percentage of electric vehicles from around 9.5% to roughly 17%.

It’s clear that the bigger couriers have some faith in electric vehicles as a means to bring their processes in line with a green world, but what is holding them back from making a bigger conversion to an all-electric fleet?

Range has improved – so what’s the problem?

Often, when the issue of electric vehicles is raised, the discussion turns to their range. It has been something of a concern for many years, but in truth, electric vehicles have seen substantial improvements to their range. In fact, the average electric range for Auto Express’ best electric vans in 2021 clocks in at 121.64 miles.

If we compare that to the Department for Transport’s latest figures – that light commercial vehicles such as delivery vans travel 12,811 miles per year on average – across 261 working days in a year, that would mean the average light commercial vehicle driver travelled 49 miles on average per day. For a standard delivery driver, an EV would certainly stand up to the challenge.

But for delivery drivers on long-haul routes up and down the country, 100 miles or so before needing a top-up charge just isn’t feasible. While topping up with petrol takes a few minutes, even rapid-charge options tend to sit at around 45 minutes for 80% capacity. A fully charged battery, on the other hand, can need five and a half hours or more.

With the courier sector experiencing such a surge in parcels going through the system, drivers clocking off their shift and handing the keys over to the next shift for back-to-back deliveries will not have time to plug the vehicle in for a five-and-a-half-hour recharge. Compared to a quick stop at the petrol station, electric vehicles still have a challenge to overcome if they are to keep up with the pressures of online shopping deliveries – refuel time.

There’s no doubt that electric vehicles will become a dominant presence on roads in the coming years. However, until the last few hurdles are overcome, we may not see a fully electric courier service that can flourish under the heavy pressure of online shopping demands.