Efficient, Effective, and Energy-Smart is Our Only Future
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If you’ve been around the long-haul and regional carrier business for a while, you know that “steady as you go” just doesn’t cut it.
You know that change and growth are inevitable in this industry.
The only “survival mode,” in fact, is change and growth.
Want proof? A couple of big examples of that continuous challenge are staring all of us in the face:
- Sweeping new rules in refrigerated products transport and handling
- Electronic Log Device requirements for every carrier, large and small
More Than Just New Rules
With a “full truckload” of change all around us, you’d think we’d all agree on total industry sustainability, too.
On the need to conserve and consolidate – from the top down – in our business practices.
On the need to fully optimize every load, at every staging point.
And on the wisdom of building a network of sustainability services so that shippers can always choose a time-sensitive sustainable solution to moving their product to market.
Well, you’d think we’d all agree on going green, considering the endless lip service that’s paid to the idea.
But you’d be wrong.
Instead, it’s been an epic struggle in the entire supply chain to effect change that would be “good for the common good.”
No more than the next guy, I don’t want to throw money down the drain for new environmental rules and regulations. And I don’t want to pay for more bureaucracy, either.
But I certainly want to leave my grandkids with two things in particular:
- A cleaner, safer environment in which to live
- An industry that’s fully modernized into a sustainable-practices central component of our nation’s economy
So How Do We Get There?
Our human capital – that creepy economics term for the dedicated men and women we count on every day at work – is the most important piece of the puzzle for becoming a sustainability champion.
Appropriate training, technical and logistical support, enthusiastic encouragement: These are the key elements of developing sustainability in a trucking company because, after all, there is a huge human component to running a carrier business every day. This is not just about robotics, the latest software, and continuous tech upgrades.
A great deal of product that needs to be moved in our economy is one-off stuff that needs special handling and human input. Actually, ingenuity. Fully trained and empowered loading crews for a carrier can do amazing things both with load efficiency and with the company’s bottom line.
Sustainable practices in our industry can and should be the best money-making choice, too.
Some Just Go For the Easy Money
If you’re a dinosaur in this business (yes, I’m implying your eventual extinction) you still think it’s OK to just charge the customer for a full truckload so you don’t have to bother with optimizing his or her product. Just get that contract, strap down that lonely little load, and shut the trailer door. Who cares?
Well, many of us care these days, and those of us who do are passing along our dirty little inefficiency secrets right to our customers.
We’re trying to educate them about sustainability in truck transport.
About their cost-effective and environmentally smart options.
And about leaving our grandkids a better world.
(Call me up sometime, at Zip Xpress Inc., and I’ll tell you all about my grandkids!)
