Welcome back to our 7-week blog series titled, “Dump Truck Pain Points”, where we are exploring the most common pain points experienced by fleet owners, operators and drivers, and explaining how the Dauber App was developed to help you overcome them.
Dauber’s goal for the industry as a whole is to equip it to enjoy higher profits, happy drivers and an overall better quality of life.
This week we’ll explore:
Dump Trucks Turning Away Work
The Problem:
As businesses grow they deal with pains such as reaching capacity. When a dump truck fleet approaches maximum capacity, they are caught in the dilemma of whether or not to accept new work.
The decision to not accept work means you might be leaving money on the table and sending drivers home early, while accepting more work risks not fulfilling your obligations to customers. Either way, tensions between parties can get high. It is critical for fleet’s drivers to stay busy and for their customers to stay happy. Both needs must be balanced on the knife-edge called full utilization of capacity.
What further increases the tension is that those extra loads are the most profitable. With the days’ costs already paid for, those last few loads are like the cream on top of the milk, all profit. To not have the ability to deliver those last few loads is a very real weakness. And to keep drivers and customers happy because of your reliability to deliver on your promises is a strength that will set you apart from your competitors.
The Solution:
A fleet’s true maximum capacity could be realized only if every truck were hauling material all day every day with zero unloaded miles. While this is not possible, it is extremely possible to bridge the substantial gap between this utopian dump truck scenario and where most fleets operate today.
To discern the market’s needs Dauber performed research in 2017. It used drivers working for a reputable trucking company, known to keep its drivers “busy”. The data showed the trucks were actually only making money 48% of the time. (These results were published in the article on Dauber in Who’s Who in Construction and Building, Spring 2017 edition for San Antonio and Austin, page 9.) This is an encouraging datapoint for owners and operators looking for a weakness to strengthen.
A fleet’s utilization is limited by the dispatcher’s ability to optimize routing. And to do this well a dispatcher must be able to visualize all their fleet’s possible movements and then perform calculations to find which routes are best. A human’s ability to make these calculations is very limited. However, fleets equipped with Dauber work far closer to peak optimization. How?
Dauber sees all possible scenarios, including options even the best dispatcher could never see, and then intelligently dispatches to reduce unloaded miles and maximize the fleet’s capacity. Our auto-dispatching feature allows loads to be assigned to the best available truck at that moment in time, which minimizes empty driving. Backhauls are utilized, deadheads are reduced, and more material is delivered in a day. Simply stated, with the Dauber App it’s possible to get more loads delivered in less time, leaving capacity to accept more work with confidence.
Dauber understands each fleet has its own set of needs and goals for the future. That’s why we take our time getting to know fleet owners and their particular needs. It’s important to us that our app is a solution that is effective, easy to use and enjoyable for everyone.
Interested in growing your fleet, schedule a demo today.
