5 practical ways to lower your transportation cost

A business is successful if it operates efficiently and at the lowest possible cost. If your company is spending heavily yet is performing poorly, it’s time to take action. There are various approaches, but today we will focus on lowering fleet expenditures on delivery.

The rising fuel costs and consumables costs are pushing up operating expenses. But you can expect to reduce a particular portion of the burden through streamlining transportation and logistics.

You can streamline inventory levels, rework your shipping networks, and successful delivery. Learn how all of these measures work together to cut expenses and increase efficiency, thereby revenue.

Adapt multiple modes

You have to ensure to become more adaptable with your transport modes. It would help if you considered looking into rail and sea shipping. They will cost you less; however, the duration for transportation is longer.

It can cost your sales dearly. On the other hand, if you solely depend on lorries, it can increase your costs. It’s, therefore, smarter to employ a unique combination of trucking and rail transportation.

Take, for example, your buyer has ordered many things, out of which few are urgent. You can always convince them that you will transport the urgent ones earlier, and others later.

That way, you may incur a bit high expenditure on shipping priority items, but you won’t lose sales. Besides, you already save on shipping the least essential items via lorries.

Optimise the route and implement technology

You should optimise the routes in such a manner that it’s cost-effective. For instance, a long-haul vehicle can pick up all the goods and travel while delivering them one by one.

You can smartly manage this process if you make use of the software. The technology takes into account multiple factors like weather, road conditions, driver’s performance, and delivery schedules. Now, you can take it easy and get your goods delivered on the move.

Moreover, you can use GPS technology to find out the most optimum routes to deliver the goods. Everyone involved in the process gets updated information on delivery schedules.

While utilising this method to bring down transport costs, you also get to keep a tab on your drivers. With multiple vehicles on the road, it cannot be easy to monitor each one personally. Through accounts, you can find out if the drivers are taking up side trips.

Meter monitoring and braking rate monitoring can help you understand where the drivers are making stops. Thus, making it easy for you to rate the drivers if outsourced. If they are on your company payroll, you can talk to them about it or warn them.

This way, they’ll stop making extra halts, thereby reducing fuel usage, making more deliverables, and saving time.

Buy or lease warehouse space

If you are shipping lots of goods to certain areas, it makes sense to get a warehouse there. Storing goods closer to your customers’ region can save you transportation costs. You need to properly engage in demand planning to ensure that your goods at the warehouse are not lying idle. Take into account seasonal buying behavior to avoid failure at this step.

Moreover, you have to forecast inventory correctly. Otherwise, warehousing can do you more harm than good. While choosing the best warehouse for your business, you must check the security of the place. If the place is not securely built, you can lose money in thefts. Better still, you can get your security alarms and personnel in place if the warehouse authorities allow you.

Utilise preventative maintenance

If you want to minimise the risk of breakdowns, then this is a must. It is the core of a strong transport and logistics chain. You should ensure to get the oils and fluids changed regularly. Filters also need attention once in a while. If you plan repairs and maintenance work at regular intervals, you can expect less downtime onsite.

Your ultimate goal should be keeping your drivers, vehicle, and goods moving. The moment they stop, you incur losses.

In the event of a breakdown, you incur losses concerning reputation. Your customer starts complaining about the delay. Moreover, you lose the person-hours of your driver, who is stranded along with the vehicle. Thirdly, the repair costs can be enormous in emergencies.

Furthermore, if an accident occurs, both goods and lives are at stake. You might have to defend yourself in court too. Thus, legal hassles and expenses are best avoided. If you want to save on such costs, then do ensure maintenance regularly.

Customise customer delivery windows

You must have seen often that you run everything smoothly. However, ultimately there will be inefficiency or useless delivery trip. The reason is that the customer is unavailable to take the delivery.

You can avoid this by asking your customer for a delivery window. You can also devise ways to send notifications to customers to delegate someone to collect the goods on their behalf. This is a part of customer service, too.

These are a few ways you can implement to minimise transport costs. You can devise more of your own that are suitable for your niche.