Environment
Environmental considerations are becoming increasingly important in the transport and logistics domain. Customer and regulatory demands for lower CO2 emissions are forcing LSPs to invest in more environmentally friendly technologies, redesign warehouses and rethink customer network designs. In addition, congestion and noise problems are forcing a rethinking of high street delivery models.
Well capitalized transport companies are renewing their vehicle fleets and upgrading to the latest engine technologies in order to comply with current or anticipated future regulatory requirements. New vehicle telematics systems are being installed in transport fleets to monitor and manage vehicle driving parameters to ensure that the most efficient driving processes are employed and that regulatory requirements for vehicle routes are adhered to. New delivery planning and routing systems are being deployed to ensure that the optimum routes for delivery of goods are followed and that vehicle load factors are maximized. Finally, entire transport networks are being re-examined and redesigned to accommodate the realities of energy constrained and environmentally friendly goods transport.
All of these changes in capital stock, monitoring and planning systems, personnel practices and network designs require resources. Time, money, qualified personnel, etc. are all necessary to allow transport and logistics companies to successfully address the implications of operating in an environmentally constrained and regulated world. Large organizations with the internal resources necessary to address the demands of these new market realities are doing so. Smaller organizations that operate with more limited resources are finding these demands to be too burdensome to pro-actively address and are taking a “wait and see” approach to changing their business practices. Unfortunately, such an approach is neither good for the environment or the small LSPs as both costs and environmental impacts rise with delay. Large LSPs are once more advantaged based on their access to resources.
