Chassis Fleet Optimization: Why visibility is critical. id-systems.com

Transcription

1 Chassis Fleet Optimization: Why visibility is critical id-systems.com

2 Improve chassis utilization by knowing how specific markets and yards perform. Optimizing your chassis fleet is a bit of a balancing act, one that s difficult but also necessary. Whether you are operating your own chassis pool, running a private chassis fleet, or using short- or long-term leases, making sure all of your assets are properly utilized across all markets is critical to both maintaining asset availability and limiting the costs required to own and maintain your fleet. This isn t new information. Fleet operators know that they need to be optimizing operations. Still, most aren t effective enough, but it s not for a lack of effort. The problem is that they don t have enough data to do it properly, and some of the data that they do have is provided by drivers and gate agents who can be unreliable sources of critical data. Manual gate transactions can be errant by mistyping a SCAC, letting a driver take the wrong chassis, or submitting the gate record at the wrong time. On premises visibility ends when the chassis is out on the streets. Street utilization affects chassis availability. With no visibility to the disposition of your chassis fleet on the street, fleet operators are missing out how they can plan for the best utilization. In an industry where margins are whisker thin, missed opportunities can mean the difference between a banner year and one where things go bust. If this limited and aging gate data and zero on-the-street information isn t cutting it, what will? Real-time visibility. Up-to-the-minute data provided by chassis tracking technologies allows equipment owners and fleet managers to identify how effectively their chassis are being utilized in individual markets and identify which locations in that market are making the largest contributions to a market s surplus or deficit. Page 1

3 Visibility into the market Too many assets sitting for an extended period in one location indicates a geographic area has a surplus of equipment needed to handle day-to-day demands for containers. But moving those chassis from one location to another to right your chassis imbalances isn t like shifting money from one account to another. You don t do it with the few clicks of a mouse button. It takes drivers, resources, and time. Getting the balance right is critical precisely because making adjustments isn t easy. The time that these chassis sit unused on a yard is called dwell time, and high dwell times are the hallmark of an unoptimized fleet. With containers on the rail let s say 35 percent of the time, a chassis would be on the road typically more often. The industry average for containers is 2.1 turns per month, with a turn lasting between seven to 12 days. The rest of the month those remaining six to 17 days a container is sitting in a yard or on a train. As long as that container is moving it s 2.1 turns per month, most carriers are happy. For a chassis, though, in a properly utilized market, that turn number is probably closer to seven out gates per month. The chassis are always going to be at ports or at rail yards or other types of terminals, but when they are used they are out on the streets for let s say two or three days at a time then brought back to the yard. So, if seven out-gates a month is a goal, how do you make sure you have chassis properly allocated in a particular market so you can hit that number? By eliminating the manual processes like yard checks and relying solely on drivers and yards to report in-gates and out-gates and using tracking technologies that give you an accurate view of what equipment is actually where. Page 2

4 Tracking technologies can tell you down to the minute how long an asset has been sitting unused, allowing you to flag any chassis that have been sitting idle for too long. It s at that point that you can confidently and accurately plan and position your chassis fleet. You would have accurate counts to work from, knowing that you may have too much equipment in this market but may need more in that one. Used long term, the VeriWise IQ Analytics Platform from Asset Intelligence can provide a multiple-year view of asset utilization trends across your fleet to let you know the current and historical efficiency of your operation, with multiple analytical reports to isolate primary contributors to underperformance. This type of visual tool can demonstrate at a glance how long assets are sitting idle on average within individual states, major cities, or zip codes. Knowing these market-level details can go a long way toward optimizing your fleet, but they can t get you all the way there. There are other factors that contribute to inefficiencies in fleet operations beyond how many assets you have in which markets. Where you have those assets, at which yards and terminals, is also a big contributor, and you need visibility there too. Visibility into the yard Traditional visibility into yard efficiency is done through painstakingly manual processes again relying on data that may not be 100 percent accurate and is possibly not fresh. Without Asset Intelligence software and data provided by tracking technologies, fleet managers are relying on traditional billing methods, inventory counts, and in-house analysis to determine if the number of chassis they have at a particular location matches with the number of times those chassis are being used. More chassis than out-gates at that location is costing the company money. If all of a location s chassis are seeing road time then there may be opportunities to make more money at that location. But if fleet managers are having to do manual analysis and pull the data from previous months to do it, they are being far too reactive, and the longer they take to react to inefficiencies the more money they are losing. Page 3

5 Asset Intelligence tracking software can remove the manual processes as well as the reporting delays and give a real-time look at which yards and terminals are operating most efficiently. Sometimes it may not be an issue of efficiency but one of traffic. Some ramps or ports may work quickly and turn chassis around but not have enough container volume to support the number of chassis a provider has located there. Asset Intelligence software can tell you that too. Asset Intelligence software provides multiple customizable fleet categorizations to enhance your understanding of how certain sub-fleets of assets are being used by individual facilities, separated into facilities of a certain type or facilities owned by the same operator. In addition, results can be filtered by year, quarter, month or other date ranges to isolate and project demand for assets based on seasonal factors, allowing you to get in front of opportunities. Going back to dwell time, with the right software you can identify not just the markets where your equipment is sitting idle, but you can ID the yards, customers and terminals that are the worst offenders. Limit chassis misuse with a fleet management system. Misuse happens. Sometimes it s accidental. Often it s not. But without the ability to track your chassis, misuse is just something you have to accept. Maybe you use a non-wheeled facility so you are keeping chassis at a yard across the street or your customer puts your chassis in a yard outside their facility and their control. Those are assets at high risk. They could, and sometimes do, disappear for weeks, months, years, at a time only to show up on the side of the road somewhere. That s likely a chassis that you ve already written off and taken a loss on. Then, now that it s suddenly reappeared, you have to go pick it up. Depending on where it is, that s an additional expense on a chassis that you d already called a loss. With Asset Intelligence, you most likely wouldn t have lost it in the first place. Or maybe you are making international runs that require you to pass off control of your chassis to another driver over the border. Without tracking capabilities, you don t know where that chassis disappears to once it crosses that border. It could be, and sometimes is, used to make additional runs that either help the driver personally or financially. While you may not be able to prevent that kind of equipment misuse, with Asset Intelligence software you would be able to identify the yards where misuse seems to be a common reoccurrence and decide if those are facilities you want to continue using. Page 4

6 Locations with the highest average dwell time likely have assets that can be relocated to other locations. If all locations in a market have higher than average dwell, then chassis are likely available to be sent to other markets, or additional allocations earmarked for that market can be limited. The right asset management system will be able to dig even deeper, though. Data can reveal how chassis are being used once inside yards whether they are spending excessive time inbound or outbound with a container mounted, or if they are being used more frequently to shuttle containers without leaving those yards. It will provide clear visibility to rail loops and backhaul situations and exact counts of those instances. Drilling into asset detail for the locations allows users to understand what each chassis has been doing since arrival, and start making decisions about how those assets can be utilized going forward. Conclusion And that s what all of this is about making better decisions. When margins are small, it s not the big decisions that make or break a company. It s the dozens of small decisions that operators make day to day that can be the difference. Knowing which markets are productive, and which are not, can help you make better decisions. Knowing which yards operate most efficiently can help you protect those margins. Page 5

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