Reduce Your Driving Costs Part 2

I have been driving vans and wagons for the last 50 years, with only 1 endorsements for speeding [In a Sprinter] and no accidents.
Times have changed a lot during that time, vehicles have got faster, roads are better, speed cameras have been invented, mobile phones and sat navs are the two inventions we can’t live without, or so we think. Seven or eight years ago I could drive to probably around 1000 different industrial estates around the country, with out even looking at a map. Nothing spectacular in that, every wagon driver and courier could do the same. About this time I was on 24 hour standby for a large printing firm, I would get a call to pick up a load, when I collected the load and asked for the address, if I was lucky they gave me the name of the firm I had to deliver to, more often than not all the night staff new was the initials of the firm, occasionally they knew the town. [This was all the information the night staff had on their work ticket.]
Now you get the full name and address along with the postcode of your drop, plus usually a name and telephone number of the customer [ a necessity if it is a night drop] This is where the sat nav and mobile come into their own. The question you have to ask yourself is: How much money am I losing trusting the sat nav? You have two main settings on your sat nav, the quickest route, and the shortest route. The shortest route takes you up every farm track, every single track road, and ‘B’ road it can find. This costs you more in fuel continually changing gear, and time due to the reduced average speed. The quickest route is the one most people use. So which is the best? The answer is none of them.
There are different types of couriers and different type of runs. Let’s assume you only do long distance single drop runs. From where you pick up, or from your home if you are already loaded, you will know the best route to the motorway or ‘A’ road you have to take to start your journey. Experience will have taught you there are different routes depending on the time of day, if you haven’t worked this out yet, look at your local map and experiment with different routes, remembering to check the mileage and time for each variation, and for each direction you are going when you hit the motorway or ‘A’ road. This might only save you 5 minutes or 5 miles motoring, but over a five day week, it’s a gallon of diesel you are saving. For single drop runs check your map before starting for the obvious shortest way. You can buy the ‘AA’ or ‘RAC’ road maps when they have been on sale for 3 or 4 months, for less than £2.00. You only need to buy a new one every few years. You can buy better ones at around £20 to £30 which are more detailed, especially if you are delivering to small hamlets or farms.
You are looking for the ‘Preferred Roads’ between your start and destination. You will see that the preferred route will invariable cut corners off the ‘Quickest route’ the sat nav will give you. Sat navs tend to use motorways continually; the preferred route on maps uses high speed dual carriageways as well. So a combination of using your sat nav and your road map will save you time and diesel. If you are delivering one drop in the London area, a quick check on the map will tell the best point to join the M25. It’s not called the longest car park for no reason. The less mileage you do on the M25 the better, you might consider planning your journey so that you are leaving the M25 before 6.00 am. You can always stop for some breakfast inside the M25 if you are too early.
When you are confident you are nearly at your destination and you can find your way there, reset your sat nav to your home address, enabling you to set of as soon as you have tipped your load. This is particularly important in cities such as London, as the sat nav can have difficulty resetting the destination if it is surrounded by tall buildings.
If you have 2 drops on your van, and the company you delivering for have not specified the order they have to be done in it is up to you which you do first. As a simple illustration, you collect two pallets from a company in Leeds, one is going to Birmingham, the other to London. Your route would be the M1 with a dogleg off to Birmingham on the way down, or on the way back. The first thought would be to drop off at Birmingham first, then for the rest of the journey you are carrying less weight, reducing fuel consumption. What is more important is at what time you are going to hit London, if by dropping off at Birmingham first you are going to hit more traffic in London, it could be more economical to drop of in London first.
Multidrop deliveries require a little more planning first. If you are doing 30 to a 100 drops a day in your local area, the company you are delivering for will give you a manifest which will list the drops in an order which will take you round in a big circle, starting from their depot, and ending up back there. If you don’t have to return to their depot at night, it should be a simple task to rearrange the run so the last drop is the one closest to your home.
Multidropping 12 to 18 drops a day with a six hundred mile or more round trip require a little more planning. I used to do this a few years ago for a distribution centre, and the orders I was delivering were all two man deliveries, and to domestic properties. The company would give you the manifest detailing the shortest route and the time taken to travel it. The way I was paid was for the mileage travelled plus 10 minutes time rate per drop, and an hourly rate to enable me to pay the drivers mate’s wages. The problem with this was that the software they used, took into account the speed limits on each road, and assumed that was the speed you were going to travel at. A typical run from Leeds would have the first drop in Nottingham, then several drops on the way to London, seven or eight drops in London, then down to the South coast for several more drops, back up through Reading with drops on the way back home. With the first drop in Nottingham your pick up time from the depot would be 7-00 a.m. for delivering to Nottingham for 9-00 a.m. I tried their method the first day and did less than 50% of the drops. They assumed that when you hit a city, there were no other vehicles on the road, every traffic light was at green, there was no pedestrians wanting to cross, and you went through every cross road and junction at 30 m.p.h without stopping, or slowing down. Can you imagine doing that in London or any other city? [This was pre sat nav days, with the drivers mate giving directions from the A to Z for each city.]

Continued

Article by Vic Farron RFT Express

If you missed the first article, you can read it here

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