On The Road To Low Carbon Logistics

[Derek_Parkinson]

It's a truism that almost every product we buy has some delivery mileage attached to it. Delivery by road is essential to the smooth running of UK business, but trucks and vans contribute close to 40% of all our transport emissions, and reducing their impact is essential to a low carbon economy.

Less obvious is how cutting emissions from road haulage will contribute to lower overall UK emissions. The difficulty can be illustrated by the trend towards out of town supermarkets, most of which are reached by car. The total environmental impact of delivering products to the home must take into account journeys made by consumers as well as the road haulage operations that supply the supermarkets.

“Let's assume that a single-deck trailer has the capacity of, say, 500 cars. Now, you could say to hauliers that they must use double-deck trailers to reduce journeys. Okay, but if you're going to take this whole issue seriously you have got to take into account the impact of all these car journeys to the home,” says Jack Semple, Policy Director of the Road Haulage Association (RHA).

The RHA is concerned that the burden of reducing UK emissions will fall on its members disproportionately – and to little overall benefit. “I know of a firm – I won't name it – that is claims to have reduced the carbon footprint of its logistics operation. It claims this because it has changed to double-deck trailers, which means you go from, say, 25 pallets per delivery to 50 pallets. Okay, but this company has also reduced its warehousing, so on paper it is showing an impressive reduction in its carbon footprint, but you have to remember these goods now have to spend longer on the road before reaching the warehouse.”

Multiple factors

On the most simplistic approach, calculating the carbon footprint of road haulage is easy enough – one litre of diesel burned produces roughly 2.6 kg of carbon dioxide, but in practice, it's not so simple. “Carbon reporting is extremely complex for the transport sector. There are many influencing factors that need to be taken into account – how full the truck is, the weather, the conditions on the roads, the driving style. What we're concerned about is that attempts to micro-manage this could be a big overhead for hauliers, but with little overall gain,” says Semple.

Setting aside for a moment external factors such as weather and traffic conditions, we can be reasonably certain about the impact of mechanical factors and driver behaviour on fuel consumption, and hence carbon emissions. According to DAF Trucks, different drivetrain specifications can each affect consumption by up to 5% while the aerodynamic set-up can account for a maximum 10% either way. Maintenance issues such as axle alignment can have a similar impact as does driving style.

But making sense of all these factors would be difficult, if not impossible, without the development of in-vehicle technology for monitoring performance, and GPS systems that track the location of vehicles.

“We can collect quite detailed driver data,” says Craig Sears-Black, Sales and Marketing Director of Isotrak, a developer of such technology. “Assuming a modern vehicle – with an engine management system – we can collect data on acceleration, braking, coasting, use of cruise control, and over-revving. Yes, weather and traffic play a part, but the biggest factor in improving fuel consumption is driver behaviour,” he says.

The company has worked with ASDA Wal-Mart to improve its transport operations. The second-largest UK supermarket, it operates 1,000 tractors and 1,700 trailers from 24 distribution centres to serve 356 stores. Overall, its retail fleet covers around 100 million miles per year.

The company's sustainability strategy requires the retail delivery arm to cut carbon emissions by 40% between 2005 and the end of 2009. By June 2008, ASDA Wal-Mart claimed it had achieved 23% savings on fuel costs over three years, and expected a further 17%, yielding total savings of 40% by 2012. ASDA's baseline performance was compared with improvements observed in similar fleets, the results showing a baseline average fuel consumption of 8.69 MPG with potential improvements of at least 5% to 9.12 MPG, achieved through daily driver debriefs and training.

The long term approach

There is a danger of giving drivers contradictory messages – requiring them to meet tougher deadlines while pressing them to conserve fuel.

“This is a people management issue,”says Sears-Black. “You get the best improvements by focusing on training, and using the data to support that. Doing this you can realistically expect to see between 5% and 10% improvements in fuel consumption. Whether you can hold onto that for the long-term is also down to people management,” he says. “But everyone in the industry knows that the vehicles of some firms are driven badly. This data can feed into a driver scorecard as part of training. And it can take into account the differences between city and motorway driving.”

“As far as the overall commitment to reducing carbon emissions – we have no problem at all with that. Many of our members are already trying to do their bit, but as a contractor your influence can be limited – you have to do what the customer wants. Our members feel that transport could be used more efficiently,” says Jack Semple.

It's a view confirmed by Isotrak. “Within food supply we estimate that if you look at the total mileage of journeys, around 27% is empty running,” says Craig Sears-Black. To address this, Isotrak has developed 3iS (http://www.isotrak.com/3iS/index.php), an online system that gives operators or customers of delivery fleets an overview of where vehicles are and what they are carrying, revealing opportunities to minimise empty running. Some 90% of UK grocery deliveries are represented on the steering group, he says.

Fewer journeys – and less empty running – could also be achieved by rethinking warehouse procedures, says Jack Semple. “Extra journeys sometimes have to be made because of warehouse procedures – because some will only accept single-stacked deliveries,” says Jack Semple. “If we want to cut emissions we need to look at this too.”

Key questions:

* What part does transport and logistics play in our low carbon strategy?
* Are we working with our transport operation, or against it?
* Can we optimise warehouse procedures to reduce journeys?