As fleets come under increasing pressure to go green, Alex Buckley, general manager EMEA and APAC operations for DispatchTrack, looks at how a hybrid approach to electrification can help.

Alex Buckley, general manager at DispatchTrack, said the firm’s growth highlights how easily last-mile deliveries can be transformed

For many commercial fleets, electrification comes with a steep learning curve. Some of the considerations businesses may need to look at include a charging strategy for vehicles that accounts for expected van mileage and charging times; a plan for new maintenance requirements; and, not least, a way to actually source commercial EVs.

Unfortunately, finding enough vehicles to roll out a fully electric fleet is going to be a sticking point for a while. Although the UK will stop selling new petrol/diesel-only vehicles by 2030, this equates to just two upgrade cycles for most fleets and demand for commercial EVs has so far outpaced supply by a wide margin.  

For fleet operators in 2022, this has clear implications: a multi-pronged approach to reducing carbon emissions – i.e., one that goes beyond electrification – is going to be a necessity.  

Challenges in fleet electrification  

Electrification is one of the most powerful ways you can cut greenhouse emissions. And it is already having an impact in the UK. DPD, for instance, is now successfully running entirely electric fleets throughout 10 UK cities.  

But because the market for commercial electric vehicles is so much less mature than the market for consumers, there remain a lot of unknowns. Not only is it difficult to predict when there will be enough supply to satisfy the market, there are also concerns about functionality with the existing technology (e.g. how well electric vans will function in cold weather).   

None of this is to suggest that this technology will not be transformative. But it is also not yet a panacea when it comes to taking control of your fleet’s carbon emissions. Right now, the short-term challenge is going to be a matter of balancing electrification with other approaches to decreasing emissions.   

A hybrid approach to decarbonising your fleet  

In order to power the right approach to going green, you are going to have to focus on a few different methods of boosting sustainability.   

First, you will need to focus on finding ways to decrease mileage across your entire fleet. Anyone who has ever planned a delivery route can tell you that this is easier said than done. At the same time, most organisations actually have a lot of room to decrease miles driven. This can be accomplished through route optimisation and by reducing missed and failed deliveries.  

Whenever a customer is not at home to accept delivery when the driver arrives, you are stuck making a redelivery attempt and essentially doubling your number of miles driven – your CO2 emissions – for that stop. If you can increase your first attempt delivery success rate by keeping your customers informed about their ETAs and then actually delivering at the right time, you can drive fewer miles and decrease your emissions even further.   

Even if your fleet is fully electrified, there is still no magical solution for the problem of wastage and inefficiency. When you cannot effectively track every item and every delivery, your inventory footprint (the other large contributor to carbon emissions in delivery management) increases, resulting in greater CO2 emissions from heating and cooling warehouse spaces. Only when you have real visibility into your entire operation on a granular level in real time can you address some of the root causes of carbon emissions beyond fuel consumption on the road.   

Reducing carbon emissions with smarter fleet management   

The hybrid approach described above requires a strong technological foundation that leverages AI and SaaS technology to offer you fast, sophisticated, and connected delivery management functionality. This might include a few different things: 

• AI-powered route optimisation, empowering you to reduce mileage with more efficient routes and decrease failed deliveries by consistently arriving at the promised time. 
• Two-way customer communications to keep customers informed at every stage of the delivery process and further reduce carbon-intensive failed deliveries. 
• Real-time delivery visibility for smarter exception management and reduce your inventory footprint through better traceability. 

Ultimately, these best practices require you to find the right technology to take control of your deliveries from end to end. As you work towards electrifying your fleet or implementing other green logistics programmes, having a strong technology bedrock that provides visibility and agility will only make your carbon reduction efforts more effective.