While the level of ‘empty running’ has decreased over the last 30 years, the latest Department for Transport (DfT) figures estimate that one in four vehicles still travels back from their delivery empty.

What is the food and grocery industry doing to reverse this trend and what benefits are being seen?
 

The transport opportunity

The food industry accounts for 25% of all HGV vehicle kilometres in the UK.Source: Defra FISS

The food and grocery industry is the biggest user of road transportation and while there will always be a need to transport items from producers to shoppers there is certainly scope to do it more efficiently.

Reducing empty running, which is when a vehicle that is full for its outbound journey returns empty to its starting point, is one way in which the industry is responding to this challenge.
 

Working together

Increasingly businesses are seeing the benefit of co-operating and working with others in order to improve their environmental and economic performance. Transport collaboration, or the sharing of vehicles on outward and return journeys, is a way to do this.

Partnership activities reduce the number of vehicles running empty

Partnership activities like this mean that the vehicle is used for both the outbound and return journey, reducing the number of empty and the transporting of fresh air.

Whilst co-operation between trading partners is not new, what we are beginning to see is collaboration between companies that would not ordinarily have considered it in the past. In recent IGD research, 85% of those surveyed reported that they are currently using or planning to use transport collaboration.

Examples of collaborative projects that have delivered results are:

• Sainsbury’s and Organix have worked together to deliver a saving of 200,000 miles per annum across their transport fleets by introducing better vehicle utilisation between the baby food supplier factory and a nearby Sainsbury’s depot.

• Unilever and Asda have worked together to share transport between their Distribution Centres (DCs) in Doncaster and Washington, Tyne & Wear. Products which were previously delivered directly by Unilever to Asda are now collected by returning Asda vehicles. This has helped to take 50,000 miles off the road.

• Kimberly-Clark and Kellogg are working together on small order deliveries. The partnership means that vehicles are filled to maximum capacity, reducing lorry loads to smaller retailers, and taking the equivalent of 270,000 miles off the road.

By taking down barriers and providing a common goal, the quest for sustainability and reduced road miles provides a key motivation for change and innovation.
 

What are the benefits?

As well as the obvious benefit of reducing vehicle miles, there are social benefits in sharing transport resources, such as reduced traffic and congestion on the roads, improved air quality, and decreased carbon emissions.

In addition, transport collaboration offers businesses the chance to save transport costs by having another company carry out a vehicle movement for them.
 

A helping hand

Sharing transport resources can reduce the environmental impact of logistics activities but it can be difficult to know where to start.

To help, ECR UK has created a free practical guide that enables businesses to identify and implement collaborative transport opportunities.

Pulling together existing best practice processes from across retailers, wholesalers and suppliers, this guide uses case studies to illustrate transport collaboration achievements.

More information:

Sustainable Distribution in 2008 IGD’s new Sustainable Distribution 2008 research provides practical insights into the range of measures which can be used to cut CO2 within companies’ logistics systems, specific tools to measure the impact of distribution and best practice examples of implementation

Transport Collaboration A practical support guide to Transport Collaboration from IGD and ECR UK to help businesses identify and implement opportunities to increase vehicle utilisation, reduce road miles travelled and reduce transport costs.

Karen Chalmers is Senior Analyst in the Supply Chain Initiatives team and is responsible for managing ECR Workgroups on Sustainable Distribution and developing the knowledge base on sustainable supply chains for IGD’s research. She is author of IGD's Sustainable Distribution in 2008 report and also contributes to training and collaborative based programmes involving participants from across the food industry.