Can software applications alone make a LTL trucking company "Green"?

I have been messing around with the idea that software alone can help a trucking company go "Green". An interesting concept when considering how your company can get the positive press of being "Green" without the massive capital costs of retooling your entire fleet. Margins are tighter and access to capital is nearly impossible in this market. However, if the trucking companies are willing change a few operational processes, embrace the technology required, and apply it to their business then it is possible to get the optimization and reduced costs of a fleet of "Green" vehicles without the costs associated.

Consider this, if I have a fleet of trucks doing my P&D or Line Haul routes and they are not utilizing the technology available to optimize those routes then I have a fleet of non-green trucks running poorly planned routes. If I then go and speed the massive amount of capital to retool my fleet to a newer more efficient MPG version but still running poorly planned routes then my gains on reduced operation costs are very marginal and a my ROI gets really stretched out. But If I use some of the newest technology to track and optimize my fleet then I am no longer running poorly planned routes.
Big deal, right? Wrong! Well considering that companies that are beginning to utilize these cutting edge services offered by a few GIS (Geo-Spatial Information Systems) companies are seeing reductions in associated fleet costs has high as 40% although the median average is around 15%. That can affect the OR of some of these LTL companies by 10% or more.

Quiz time!
Is it more efficient and less damaging to the environment to?
A) Send a truck down the road half loaded.
B) Send a fuel efficient truck down the road fully loaded.
C) Not send a truck at all.

The answer is not as evident as you might think. If you are always in a reactive mode with the freight on the dock then your foresight and total freight planning drastically drops off the charts. However if you have real time visibility into your fleet your ability to see the effects of the freight changing outside of the four walls of the dock gives you a strategic advantage when it comes to load planning and line haul routing. If you can plan the loads knowing what freight you have to account for before it even hits the dock that gives you the ability to load your trailers just like you have docked every piece of freight and can then use only the absolute necessary space to load everything that needs to be moved on down the road. So if you can tell that a 52' trailer is all that is necessary to cover the outbound freight you will not have to send that 32' trailer with a few pallets at all.

It is amazing the how much less impact on the Earth you have when you don’t have to send a partially loaded truck at all. Plus you save a couple of bucks too.

Welcome!

My name is William and I want to welcome you to my blog: Life and Times of a Technology Developer.

I work with various companies to identify ways to leverage technology to solve broken business processes. I work for an application and hardware company that creates solutions for Transportation and Logistics (mostly LTL) companies. Our main solution involves a forklift mounted freight weight verification system. I'm in a small company by many standards, but we have LTL freight customers from Charlotte to LA and from Milwaukee to Houston.
My job here is to be the Jack-of-all-IT-trades. I handle all of the technology development clear through ongoing support. It is tough sometimes. I have done more then a few all nighter and have had numerous 100 plus hour work weeks. My purpose for blog is to take my experiences and put them in a central place so that other tech devs out there can find out how I solved some rather interesting problems. I work on numerous computer platforms and hardware components. I have found that most applications and hardware do not like to talk to each other so I end up being the mediator between those two seemingly opposing forces.
Outside of posting solutions I have had to deal with I also wanted to share some of the situations I have to deal with when it comes to business management. My co-workers are the best, most supportive, and professional coworkers in the world.
Thanks for taking the time to stop in and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me and I can offer my experience.
My first link is a humerous one. I feel, like many tech-heads out there, that most end users just dont understand.... or care for that matter. For those of us that know what that feels like this is for you.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/