Transparency18 sponsored article

Managing a transportation business often means operating on razor-thin margins. As a result, data analytics becoming increasingly important when it comes to operational efficiencies and cost-saving measure that keep businesses in the black. Trailer pools are no exception.

The good news: While trailers historically don’t produce significant amounts of data, they produce enough to drive necessary improvements in trailer health and trailer pools optimization.

Optimizing trailer pools

A clear understanding of trailer utilization levels at any given site — not to mention across various landmarks, customer locations and depots — isn’t easy obtain. Without it, however, many companies may see an increase in total cost of ownership.

Trailer utilization data typically generates a bell curve distribution, illustrating that a small number of trailers are doing most of the work, while some are not being put into service at all. But, sometimes, fleets simply don’t recognize that their expensive assets have been sitting unused.

For example, Spireon, a vehicle intelligence company, examined the typical month of a particular trucking company and found:

• Three trailers were dispatched for nine loads each

• Six trailers hauled eight loads each

• Eight trailers hauled one load a piece

• Eight trailers weren’t dispatched at all

Given that these were fairly new trailers, there was no reason why they shouldn’t have been placed into service equally.

Of course, equal distribution of loads across your trailer pools at any given location is one thing. Ensuring you have the right number of trailers at each location is another.

Informed by data like customer order inventories, loads booked and appointment times, organizations can arrive at the optimal number of trailers to retain at any given location.

Spireon found that 11 percent of one company’s trailers were simply not required at a particular location. In fact, a group of 25 healthy trailers sat for 30 weeks, because the location had been over-resourced. As a result, a smaller pool of trailers did the heavy lifting, while others, which were difficult to access, weren’t put into service at all.

Driving business results with clear data insights

Spireon’s goal is to provide transportation business owners with the powerful insights they need to track, manage and protect their most valuable assets—including connected trailers.

The company’s roadmap includes:

• Smart trailer technologies that leverage trailer OEM integrations and data suppliers

• TMS integrations that push trailer data and reporting into TMS systems in real-time

• Trailer pool optimization insights that leveraging existing Spireon technologies

Information on trailers is likely where the industry is headed.  Learn more about what Spireon has to offer the industry by attending Transparency18.

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