what are the cost-saving benefits of sustainable transportation for businesses?

Although cutting costs and being profitable is an important part of logistics operations, the benefits of sustainable transportation extend beyond mere cost savings.

Green logistics cuts carbon emissions, minimises waste and lowers costs. For businesses, this type of logistics calls for an investment upfront, but the benefits further down the line far outweigh the costs.

As adopting a more caring attitude towards the planet becomes more important in business, consumers are shunning businesses that are reckless in this regard. By being selective about who they buy from, they believe their choices can have a positive impact on the environment. Price may still be a factor in their decision, though, so it’s appropriate to keep the cost low, if possible, as well as be environmentally friendly.

Publicising your environmental commitment measures is crucial in marketing. Local businesses in the community, clients, customers and other stakeholders may all want to know about efforts to reduce energy consumption, minimise wastage or reduce the environmental impact of your services or products. They may also be interested in the green credentials of your sustainable supply chain.

You may provide environmental reporting for your stakeholders as well. Environmental reporting may even be a mandatory part of your annual report.

Green logistics refers to any practice that minimises the impact the network and delivery have on the environment. Making efforts to make transportation and other operations more sustainable can help a business to lower its emissions and reduce its carbon footprint.

Load optimisation is the practice of coordinating items (in warehouses and distribution centres) that have a similar estimated time of arrival (ETA) or destination. Today’s volumes make this task just about impossible to do manually, but the use of smart supply chain solutions can identify and automate vehicle loading. This stops the business sending out trailers that are only carrying half a load and cuts costs.

If a customer returns a product, automatically this incurs another journey, which increases your CO2 emissions. The most obvious solution is to pass the cost on to the customer, but this won’t work. Today, customers are unlikely to even consider buying from a company that doesn’t have a free returns policy.

This makes the best plan of action to display good-quality photos of your products on your website and write clear product descriptions so customers can see exactly what they’re buying. You should also make sure you pack and load vehicles effectively to prevent damage during transit. Damaged goods will have to be returned, which will mean more journeys and more emissions.

The more time a vehicle spends on the road, the more fuel it uses. Making deliveries at night can reduce the truck’s time on the road significantly and also lower traffic congestion.

Often, companies that observe green practices are more appealing to clients, customers and employees. Customers who prefer to buy from green(er) companies may buy more from a green company than from a non-green company. Employees and customers are attaching more and more value to environmental responsibility, so being environmentally responsible is an option that a transportation business should explore.

In some settings, cloud-connected route allocation tools can assess delays in traffic, parking and even construction. In rural areas, the roads, the weather, the distance from an EV charging station or other factors may be more relevant. The incorporation of this intelligence into route planning in real time helps businesses to operate more efficiently and cut costs.

It would be remiss not to discuss the opportunities technology offers to make transportation more sustainable. Tech is heavily used in the logistics world and can help you to form strategies and approaches that reduce your carbon footprint and general impact on the environment, not to mention save costs. Route optimisation software, which we’ve already mentioned, is one useful tool in this regard. Here are some further suggestions:

Aggressive driving and DEF levels create the need for expensive maintenance on your fleet. Aggressive driving produces excessive levels of wear and tear on vehicles, causing them to require maintenance or repair sooner than they might have otherwise needed to. If a vehicle isn’t in a good state of repair, it tends to use more fuel, so undertaking predictive and planned maintenance can allow your vehicles to run better and save fuel.

Telematics can help you by sending alerts based on time or mileage. The fact that telematics tools connect to your truck’s engines can alert you to emerging issues that need to be addressed. You can reduce the wear and tear that causes your fleet to use too much fuel.

Logistics companies can lower their carbon emissions easily by using electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles. It’s possible to use them for short- or long-haul transportations. Air quality is a major concern in urban areas, so electric vehicles are especially welcome and suitable in them.

If not using electric vehicles or hybrid ones, alternative fuels are an option. Biofuels are one type of fuel shipping companies could use. These can contain renewable diesel made from wood waste or from cooking oil or other fats and may be blended with petroleum-based diesel. The use of biofuels has the power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions considerably.

Naturally, like any other business, a transportation business wants to shape its bottom line for the better. Sustainable transport can affect a business’s bottom line directly and indirectly. Here are a few ways they do this:

You have to be able to illustrate that you implement sustainable policies and practices if you wish to secure competitive insurance premiums. Some types of businesses pose environmental risks such as gradual environmental pollution, clean-up costs or product liability, and the costs associated with these risks are huge.

Insurers will want to understand the measures you implement to stop incidents from occurring. They may conduct an audit of your business and how you approach health, safety and environmental practices. An unfavourable audit will increase your insurance premium. That or the insurer might not even insure you at all. If you can show you take environmental responsibility seriously, they may lower your premium.

Often, goods need to be placed in some sort of packaging. The more you can pack into a single shipment (within regulations, of course), the more you can cut your business costs. Rather than send small items in large boxes that have lots of space in them, you may prefer to work with a logistics company to develop a system so that you’re selecting the right size boxes for your goods. This can save space so you can transport more in one shipment and, because you’re packing in a more environmentally conscious way, reduce your packaging costs and keep your customers happy at the same time.

The impact of making your routes more efficient is obvious. The more efficient you can make your routes, the less fuel you can use during a trip. Businesses are using lots of different strategies in this regard, from decentralised operations to route optimisation software. The use of telematics to monitor drivers’ driving habits can also cut costs.

Regular and predictive maintenance helps to protect a business’s bottom line by sparing them greater expenses down the line. The maintenance can save them costly unforeseen replacements that might not have been necessary if the business had been more observant of the condition and functionality of its equipment.  

Being environmentally responsible generates a host of benefits for businesses. One of the main ones is savings on costs because the business can lower its usage of fuel and energy, and potentially lower its insurance costs. Government schemes that encourage businesses to transition to more environmentally friendly modes of transport can reduce costs further by supporting the business when it’s buying new vehicles.

Of course, being environmentally responsible brings more benefits than just cutting costs and financial support from the government. A clear commitment to the environment enhances your brand reputation and has clients and consumers more willing to work with you and buy from you. Some businesses will happily vote with their feet and look elsewhere if you don’t operate in a sustainable way. These businesses aren’t the only elements that will smile kindly at you: your employees will also form a better opinion of the business, and you’ll enjoy better working relationships with them. All of this will be happening while you enjoy greater long-term profitability.

A business that shows no concern for the environment is a business that is letting its competitors get ahead of them and is missing out on some valuable benefits. If you suspect you could be operating more sustainably, why not conduct an audit of your business and identify ways to change this for the better? Ramp up your eco-friendliness to reap the long-term benefits, financial and otherwise, for your business.

One attempt to help lower carbon emissions on the planet has been the development of eco-friendly vehicles, such as electric vehicles and hydrogen-powered vehicles. The logistics world is starting to move towards electrification when it comes to transport. In the case of trailers, full electrification is more challenging because of the longer distances and heavier loads. Some trucks could take care of deliveries if the routes are short enough, though.

Eco-friendly vehicles are the way forward and can help to cut emissions. They also offer big benefits for business. The cost per mile is less than half per mile as it is for gas or petrol, and the vehicles don’t require tune-ups or oil changes. The operating costs of an electric vehicle are lower and there’s less downtime.

Businesses enjoy the additional advantage that they can integrate electric vehicles easily into a large cloud-connected supply chain network. They can use AI-powered technologies to analyse data from the past and in real-time, and can derive insights that allow them to save money, consume less fuel and streamline their operations.

These aren’t the only reasons you might wish to use electric vehicles, however. The British government understands how off-putting it might be for a business to transition from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles to cleaner energy ones. That’s why it supports businesses that want to buy certain types of vehicles. When the business buys the vehicle, the government incorporates the grant into the purchase price of the seller, who includes the grant as a discount on the purchase price.

Joloda Hydraroll’s automated and manual loading solutions lend a hand in making your logistics business greener. Solutions such as the manual skate and track help to reduce your carbon footprint, and the automated solutions offer even more benefits. These include:

• less damage to goods during transit, lowering the chances of returns that inflict costs on the business, such as repackaging, and entail further trailer journeys;
• reduction in the size of the fleet necessary to transport the same number of pallets, lowering fuel costs and the need to send out as many vehicles on the road;
• less use of forklift trucks required in the loading process, lowering CO2 emissions and saving on fuel and energy.

Our loading solutions can not only help you to operate more sustainably, but they also speed up your loading processes. To find out more about how they can help your logistics operations, contact us and speak to one of our team. We can advise you on the best solution for your operations and install it for you.