There has been a fair amount of evidence lately that private fleets are growing in number as more companies are taking control of their company’s transportation function. At the same time, we are seeing the truckload sector of the market suffer a little.
To me, this means freight is becoming more organized, predictable, and regional. We’ve seen average length of haul decline in the past decade or so. For instance, according to the National Private Truck Council (NPTC), the average length of haul to retail outlets is about 200 miles.
Back in 2019, we published a thought leadership report, More Regional Haul: An Opportunity for Trucking? In the report, we identified 10 trends that were influencing the growth of regional haul. It included the growth of e-commerce; the push toward immediate delivery of goods; vehicle automation; vehicle specialization; increased use of long combination vehicles; innovations in load matching systems; growth of GPS-based asset tracking systems on the tractor, trailer, load, and driver; data collection and mining; and advances in technologies such as electric and hybrid vehicles.
It’s always nice to get validation for something you predicted. I think much of what we said is happening right now.
The fact that length of haul is getting shorter means that fleets—both private and for-hire—are seeing more expected, even predictable, routes. Couple that with the vast amounts of data now available to fleet managers, and there is a big opportunity for these fleets to improve operational efficiency. They can easily compare miles per gallon between vehicles, track visits to the service shop between PMs, and evaluate driver behavior that impacts fuel use. This data lets them make changes quickly when they identify an issue.
The data, along with the fact that the trucks operate close to the company’s locations, presents an opportunity for efficiency gains by optimizing routes, reducing empty back hauls, and eliminating out-of-route miles. All of these improvements boost overall operating efficiency, which matters more as data from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) show that truck operating costs are at an all-time high.
Shorter hauls also let fleets pilot new technologies and test their effectiveness more easily, since vehicles return to base more frequently. This means they can experiment with various aerodynamic devices, axle configurations, and other technologies and even begin to look at some alternative-fueled vehicles to see if they make sense.
While predicting the future is difficult, we succeeded in doing so in 2019, and I think it’s safe to say that going forward, we won’t see length of haul increasing in the short term. Perhaps in a few years, with the developments in autonomous vehicle technology, we will be able to predict a longer average length of haul. As with all things in the future, only time will tell.
