Is Driver the Second Pillar of Transport Business
When you are running a transport business, you need to understand that the driver is the second pillar of your organisation. If you are not managing driver management properly, you are losing a lot of time and revenue.
This is a complete guide on how the driver is the second pillar of your logistics or transport business and why you should focus more on the driver management to get the best out of your business.
(a) Experience of Drivers
Drivers have no overall experience in running the entire transport all by themselves. As they are the drivers of the truck, they have eyes on all the parts of the business which is done by very few people. Starting from when the goods are loaded into the truck to the part where you are completely unloading the truck and giving the updates to your superior.
So, as you already know most of the between parts play a very important role. The amount of experience of drivers in handling all of these will tell you how fast your goods are transported and how much efficient work is done. So, you need to take full advantage of the experience of the rivers. You can do it by assigning the right drivers and making complete use of their experience. This guide will tell you all about it.
(b) Truck loading- unloading
The first thing that will get while doing the driver management is the experience of truck loading-unloading. As we already mentioned the driver is responsible or at least has eyes on the loading and offloading of the trucks in all the cities.
If the process is faster, you will save a lot of your time. Along with this, if your driver has enough experience in loading the truck correctly, you can easily put more goods in the truck and make the work done better.
Thereafter, the goods are ready to dispatch, this brings us to the next point.
(c) Dispatching
The dispatching process differs based on the business model you work on. Usually, it’s a process of making the goods ready for transportation for the final delivery of the goods. In some cases, it also involves packaging and labeling whereas in most parts, it’s just about assigning the goods in the truck and trying to add maximum goods in the truck keeping the safety protocol in mind.
So, dispatching goods will depend on the business model. Whatever model you work with, your drivers can help you a lot. This is the area of their expertise as they have been working with the same thing for years. So, they know a lot better on how you can easily dispatch them.
(d) Destination and Route Management
Destination and route management are an important part of the business process. A small shortcut will not only save you time but also help the drivers to get proper rest during the rest of the time.
Now, you can’t simply use maps to find the best route like we do in the cars. There are many areas where a heavy-load truck can’t get through. On some roads, it’s not legal for trucks to move. So, you will have to find the route where your trucks can easily pass through. In India, there are many narrow roads especially if you are near a city. It’s not that such roads the shortcuts.
Therefore, a truck driver knows which road to take and which is the best route management option to reach the destination in less time. This will also help you with fuel consumption. This brings us to the next point.
(e) Fuel Consumption
One significant part of your earnings goes into fuel. Fuel consumption management shouldn’t be ignored at any cost. With rising fuel costs, it’s important to ensure that the truck you are using for transport uses less fuel and gives enough performance.
This also depends on the driving type. If the drivers have enough experience, their smooth driving can save a lot of fuel. The small fuel cost doesn’t matter when you are just traveling 100 km. However, in big routes, a small change will play an important role in the fuel change. So, you should keep all these things in mind. Truck maintenance plays a huge role in maintaining fuel consumption.
(f) Truck Maintenance
Let’s talk about the other thing which decides the efficiency of your business. One of your most important pillars – truck drivers are responsible for handling and managing it. It’s all about maintaining the vehicle.
When you are transporting heavy loads from one place to another – especially over a long distance, you need to ensure that the vehicle you are using has the best maintenance. It shouldn’t break down in the middle of nowhere nor it should consume more fuel. Even pollution control is very important. All these can be done only by truck maintenance.
Its cost also may decrease or increase significantly if you don’t do the regular maintenance of your truck. This all depends on your drivers. So, you should ensure that they have proper knowledge about truck maintenance and they are doing their best to maintain all the vehicles.
(g) Technology Management
Lastly, you can always use technology to manage the truck drivers. Today, there are many transport management software where you will get different modules for different things. One of the models you will get is for driver management. When you have optimized management, you can get the best out of your drivers and take regular updates from them. This will help you in increasing the efficiency of your business revenue.
Therefore, it has become much easier and more important to ensure that you are doing the best driver management for your transport company. The tool also allows you to assign the drivers based on the experience of their driving. So, you can do efficient route management with this.
Warp-up
To summarize, this was all about how truck drivers are the most important part of your transport company. Make sure that they are getting all the facilities that you are giving to your staff. Their well-being plays a very important role in the company. So, you should not give them over time. Giving them proper rest with their preferred routes will help you in everything.
You can start by analyzing all the things about the driver management and see how they work currently with your orders. Thereafter, you can use the technology and set a business management software to get information about the route management den how you can get the most out of your drivers.
Thereafter, you can keep in mind all the things that we have stated here such as truck maintenance, route management, etc., and pay proper attention there to ensure efficient and faster delivery of the goods.
Rishit Bhatt is a content strategist and a professional writer with a keen interest in technology and tech-enabled businesses. He aims to help businesses integrate tech into their on-premises infrastructure with technical documentation and helpful articles.