Logistics/fleet management
Logistics/fleet management
Reducing fleet travel
While we are steadfast in our commitment to provide our franchisees, affiliates, and corporate operations with superior store delivery service, we continuously look for opportunities to fulfill this commitment in the most efficient manner possible. We accomplish this by:
- Choosing strategic locations to build our distribution centres in order to support service areas economically and efficiently.
- Using computerized routing systems in our Québec and Ontario regions. These systems enable transportation department personnel to select the most efficient route for travelling to and from their delivery destinations. While the constantly changing dynamics of our retail network makes it difficult to precisely measure the travel savings that result from the use of these systems, our Ontario region estimates that the computerized routing system reduced the fleet’s travel distances by approximately 20% or 3.9 million kilometres in 2007.
- Regularly analyzing the effectiveness of existing store delivery frequencies, and adjusting the frequencies where it makes sense to do so.
- Where practical, designing our stores’ receiving areas to accommodate 53’ trailers. This allows us to use larger vehicles capable of making more deliveries in one trip.
- Using multi-compartment trailers that can transport loads requiring multiple temperature zones, such as dry grocery (ambient temperature), produce (refrigerated), and frozen products in the same trailer, thereby reducing the number of trips we need to make to service our retail network.
Wherever possible and feasible, after making a store delivery, we arrange for our vehicles to pickup product from our suppliers’ warehouses for their return trip to the distribution centres, rather than returning empty. This practice, referred to as backhauling, reduces the empty kilometres travelled by our trucks and eliminates the need for suppliers to place trucks on the road to deliver goods to our stores and distribution centres. During 2007, our company-owned fleets and third-party fleet service providers travelled over 2 million backhaul kilometres.
When feasible, we arrange for products to be delivered to our distribution centres using intermodal transport. This involves delivering shipments to and from railyards by truck with the shipment then being transported by rail from city to city. This practice reduces transportation-related emissions. Within our organization, intermodal transportation is used most extensively by our Western region, which receives approximately 30% of inbound shipments by rail.
We are also encouraged by the continuing efforts among our many suppliers to reduce the cubic space requirements of their products and packaging, which reduces the number of shipments required to supply our stores each year.
