EFFICIENT OPERATION FOR SMALL FLEETS AND OWNER DRIVERS, DFT BEST PRACTICE AND SMALL FLEET PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TOOL

Scheme overview

11.1 The Freight Best Practice (FBP) program commenced in 2004, as an evolution to the Transport Energy Best Practice Program.

11.2 The Program offered a suite of guidance documents for the freight industry including material specifically targeted at owner driver or small fleet owner (10 or less) on improving vehicle efficiency, reducing fuel and operating costs and reducing environmental impact of business).

11.3 The promoted measures including:

Better driving (improved braking, acceleration, clutch control).

Vehicle loading (maximizing loads and trips / back loading).

Using Sat-Nav and Route Planning Systems to optimize routes and deliveries.

Driver bonus schemes for reduction in fuel consumption and environmental impact.
Effective cost measuring.

11.4 The full range of guidance documents were categorized under the headings of; Saving Fuel; Developing Skills; Equipment & Systems; Operational Efficiency; Performance Management and Public Sector. The individual documents are listed on the following page.

Objectives

11.5 The Freight Best Practice program was aimed at improving the operational efficiency and reducing the environmental impact of the freight industry in England. This was expected to result in reduced CO2e emissions and contribute to reducing congestion and improving local air quality and also safety.

11.6 Transport accounts for 18-22% of the UKs CO2e footprint and of this, goods vehicles account for around 5% of emissions.

11.7 The aim of the scheme was therefore to work with the freight industry and provide the necessary information to operators to allow them to make efficiency savings and thereby to reduce their emissions levels. Jonathan James, Director of the Freight Best Practice Programme commented in 2008 that:

"The changing attitude in the road freight industry, combined with the obvious pressures on profitability, means that information freely available from Freight Best Practice on how to operate fleets more efficiently can only be a good thing and is highly respected by the industry", said James. "Information is power, without the right information there are often fleets that are operating in ways that could easily be improved but are not taking the opportunity to improve simply because of the lack of knowledge."

Scheme duration

11.8 The funding for FBP was withdrawn as a result of the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2010 and the scheme ceased along with associated schemes such as the Freight Facilities Grant which encouraged modal shift from road to rail or water. It is understood that the withdrawal of the scheme was mainly due to political changes on the change of Government and not necessarily a reflection of the success or otherwise of the scheme. The program continues to receive funding from the Welsh Government, but this is now limited to maintaining the website (http://freightbestpractice.org.uk) where the information is available and providing literature, pocket guides and the CD based tools free of charge to the Welsh freight industry.

Scheme Evaluation

11.9 In an independent impact assessment commissioned by the Department for Transport in 2007, the Freight Best Practice program was found to be directly responsible for achieving the following:

Helping transport operators using the guidance to save an average £20,500 (USD$32k) per year.

This represented an overall industry saving of £83m (US$132M) over the two year period 2005 to 2007.

Circa 240,000 tons of CO2 have been saved over this period.

11.10 Based on the cost of the scheme, it was estimated that the cost per ton of CO2 saved

was £8 (USD$12), or £30 per ton of CO2e. The £2m (USD$3m) cost of the scheme was found to be far outweighed by the cost savings attributed to the scheme of £83m (USD$125m). 18

11.11 Overall 24% of fleets are aware of FBP in 2007, compared to 13% in 2003. Of those aware of FBP, 36% had gone on to use at least one aspect of the program (9% of all fleets, compared to 5% in 2003). The following table summarizes key factors associated with awareness and use.

Table 11-1: Awareness and use of DfT Freight Best Practice Program amongst operators (2007)

18 _{Lawson, Michealis & Waldron, 2007, Freight Best Practice Programme Impact Assessment: Final Report,}

Improvements to the scheme

11.12 The 2007 evaluation report made certain recommendations following the findings and analysis of the 1200+ telephone interviews with both user and non-user operators.

11.13 Noting that overall 9% of fleets are using FBP, with a further 15% aware of it but not using it, there was more which could be done to increase usage. Analysis showed that half of large fleets were aware of FBP and half of these were using it. Whilst much lower proportion of medium and small size fleets were aware of FBP let alone using it. It was recommended that the program think about the type of organization it should target to:

Continue increasing awareness of FBP among large fleets.
Increase the conversion rate from awareness to use.
Increase awareness and use among smaller fleets.
Target transport managers.

Increase use and awareness amongst own account operators.

11.14 It was recommended that the program focus on the opportunities which it can make the most difference, with the most fertile potential areas identified as:

Continue increasing awareness of FBP amongst large fleets – the conversion rate from awareness to use is much higher among large fleets than other size fleets. Therefore, the more fleets that are aware of the program, the more users there will be. The larger fleets have the ability to save a greater amount of fuel per fleet than smaller fleets. The program therefore could target a small number of fleets that can achieve a higher proportion of savings.

Increase the conversion rate from awareness to use – there was found to be a fairly high proportion of fleets that were aware of FBP but not using it. The challenge with these is to show them the benefits they would get from using FBP; this would include making sure that fleets see the relevance of the program to their business and that they can see examples of how other fleets have benefited from the program. This was considered to be particularly important among the 25% of large fleets that are aware of, but not using, FBP.

Target transport managers – transport managers within fleets are much more likely to use FBP and to take action than non-specialists. It was therefore considered to be a priority for FBP to target these before other managers.

In terms of relevance to this study, it is notable that the pursuit of increased awareness amongst smaller operators is not one of the recommendations, with the authors seeing evidence of the low take-up amongst the smaller fleets.