Always in demand
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CM meets FreshLinc fleet engineer Andy Marchant and finds out how the company keeps up with seasonal demands that stretch through the year
Words: George Barrow / Images: Stuart Wood There are certain times of the year that
always instil a feeling of dread. For some it might be planning a family holiday or iling the tax return, but for a haulier it is undoubtedly the peak seasonal periods. Trucks become a rare commodity, drivers run out of hours and absolutely everyone is on a deadline.
For Lincolnshire-based chilled distributor FreshLinc and its leet engineer Andy Marchant, however, the lux of seasonal demand is just another challenge in managing distribution for some of the UK’s largest supermarkets.
During the Christmas period, FreshLinc’s leet expands from 156 tractor units and 248 trailers to more than 260 trucks and nearly 375 trailers, but the demand doesn’t end with Christmas. Valentine’s Day, Mothering Sunday, Easter and Halloween are all busy times demanding extra capacity and tight control. It is therefore
understandable that Marchant pays such close attention to his base leet.
For Marchant, who joined the company in 2008 from Fowler Welch, managing the FreshLinc leet not only means coping with the company’s continued growth, but also introducing new cost-saving measures and applying the years of product knowledge he has gained during his 13 years on the job.
“One of the irst things I introduced after joining the company was a reduction in the top speed of our leet,” Marchant says. “By reducing the limit on our trucks from
56mph to 54mph, we’ve made signiicant improvements in our fuel economy and reduced our CO2 output.”
While reducing speed might be an established method in improving economy, for FreshLinc it goes beyond just saving fuel.
“We are trying to do what we can, where we can, to lower emissions but reducing your carbon footprint does cost money. We’ve looked at double-deck trailers to increase our productivity and lower our CO2 per tonne, but that didn’t work as we found that the product coming in isn’t always at a consistent height, so now on four of our trailers we are trialling an aerodynamic aid to improve mpg.”
While it’s clear Marchant can see there are gains to be made in experimenting with new technology, experience has taught him that attention has to be paid to the basics. Having built up a strong relationship with Michelin during his time as national leet manager at Fowler Welch, Marchant knows the role that tyres play in both economy and reliability.
“Tyres are very important on any leet, particularly one of this size – which was why I was keen to introduce a tyre maintenance contract. I’d worked with Michelin before and had seen the beneits of having good quality tyres on a leet.
“We used to suffer with tyre problems and had a lot of blowouts, which were costing us huge amounts of money because of the damage they cause to the trucks. It came down to the types of tyres that were being itted on the vehicles when we got them. Hire companies will put on a lesser make, and with that comes problems. If you’re running a poor tyre, you end up costing yourself more money, so I knew a tyre contract with a premium manufacturer was the way to sort it out. It might seem like an extra cost, but you’re paying for the development and the quality.” The relationship with Michelin is growing all the time, and while other premium brands occasionally appear on new trucks, the contract now covers more than 75% of the leet. However, Marchant’s aim is clear: to get his entire leet onto a premium tyre covered by Michelin to increase reliability, reduce cost and lower fuel consumption.
Careful management
It’s not just the tyres that have been closely monitored, though, as Marchant knows the vital role his drivers play in maintaining the eficiency of the FreshLinc leet.
Marchant says: “We’ve started to trial telematics on ive of our vehicles to gain more information on driver behaviour. It’s not a big step for us as we’ve always tracked our trailers, but by doing this we hope to see improvements in our mpg and will be able to drill down into the data on a daily basis.” “It’s all about driver training,” he continues.
“A few years ago we introduced some LPG vehicles to help with our fuel bills and emissions. From an environmental point of view, it does help to lower our CO2, but the problem we found was that we had to manage the drivers to make sure they illed up with gas and diesel.”
With more than 200,000 litres of fuel passing through the leet each week, Marchant is constantly looking to get the best price, and pays close attention to the market.
“There’s no doubt the price of fuel is hurting us every day, but we buy fuel on spot and I’m always looking around at cost-saving measures and reviewing the prices for all products.
“We’re also bringing in a new Triscan fuel management and monitoring system that will make illing up easier. It’s a two-touch system that uses a kiss key for logging fuel. It takes the reading direct from the truck and gives us more accurate igures to help manage fuel.” FreshLinc’s dedication to eficiency has helped with its work for many of Britain’s supermarkets, and has seen it grow from working as a subcontractor to a primary carrier. With depots in Spalding, Wakeield, Evesham and Holland, the day-to-day business of transporting chilled produce, cut lowers and ambient goods for clients including Asda, Tesco and Waitrose requires precision and planning.
Marchant says: “Our trailers have always been tracked, but we’re now using the same Isotrak system as many of maintenance. I suggested we sold the vehicles and started to contract lease to avoid depreciation and putting [maintenance] all in the hands of the hire contract company.
“Fortunately, the cost of the DAFs on a lease basis is more competitive, and DAF was able to put a package together for the MD that he bought into. The vehicles have proved themselves with a minimum of downtime and a good cost-saving over the Scanias.” With each vehicle travelling between 180,000km200,000km a year, Marchant says it was a sensible decision to switch to a four-year hire contract agreement.
This gives FreshLinc the best value particularly from its latest additions – 25 new DAF XF105s that are replacing 20 Scania units – bringing the total number of new DAFs to 100 – a milestone that has been commemorated with a specially liveried truck complete with gold decals and steel light bars (above left).
For the moment, while FreshLinc continues to grow, Marchant is satisied with the way his leet is shaping up. “I’m happy with achieving a good average for my leet. We’ve been fully automatic [transmissions] for two years and the mpg for a leet of this size with 200 drivers has beneitted from the things we’ve tried. I’m comfortable with the trucks we’re bringing in, and when Euro-6 arrives I’m not going to jump into anything.” ■