Delivery Performance Analysis Helps Lower Your Overall Mileage Cost

Product distribution companies need to keep a watchful eye on their fleet operations, where every variance can erode already-slim margins and impact the bottom line. By leveraging a reliable stream of accurate data from your fleet’s telematics system, you can analyze delivery performance indicators—commonly referred to as “last mile” metrics—to expose route execution issues and focus on corrections needed to improve actual costs of your delivery operations.

Use Plan versus Actual analysis to pinpoint variances

When you overlay the data from your route planning software with the data from your fleet’s GPS tracking devices, it enables you to make a clear comparison of your drivers’ planned miles to the actual miles driven and zoom in on variances where a truck traveled more miles than expected. Mileage variance may result from:

• Improper stop sequence. Some drivers may opt to change up their routes on the fly, figuring that it will be faster or easier to service customers in a different order than what the route plan dictates. In doing so, they fail to realize that they are increasing miles and therefore adding cost.
• Unplanned stops. Most distributors have dealt with “hot shots”—customers who call for an extra unscheduled delivery because they are low on stock. There’s value in providing outstanding customer service, but there’s also a cost in driver time and truck mileage. In other scenarios, drivers may intentionally stop somewhere off their route for lunch breaks or other reasons. These situations can be easily identified and corrected.
• Route time. Facing heavy traffic, many drivers will seek alternate routes that allow them to meet delivery windows. Unfortunately, although these routes may be faster, they also add miles to the route—and more miles equate to higher costs.

Plan vs. actual analysis lets you quickly identify and determine the impact of mileage variances on actual delivery costs on a cost per mile basis.

For example, you might see that in the Louisville area, it should have taken you 102,000 miles to deliver all your product last week, but it actually took 118,700. That’s a waste of 16,700 miles. At a cost of $2 per mile, that’s $33,400 in lost profit. You can zero in on the efficiency of your Louisville routes and drivers, monitor how many cases your drivers are delivering per mile or per hour, and take appropriate action. Soon you’ll see the improvement in mileage reflected on your bottom line.

Gridline Last Mile—the “Plan vs Actual” Delivery Performance Solution

There’s only one route execution solution that delivers this kind of insight. Gridline Last Mile is designed specifically for product distribution businesses, giving you actionable route performance information to manage your distribution deliveries down to the individual route, driver, or customer. Let us show you how other distributors are using Gridline Last Mile to improve their product delivery performance and increase profitability.
Request your demo now.