Truck route planning and fleet digitization with telematics E-Book

Jürgen Stausberg

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 68

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

This book shows how digitization of your own fleet can be used to achieve efficiency gains, particularly in the bakery, construction logistics, brewing, vehicle transport, fresh food, beverage wholesale, food wholesale, oil, mill, recycling, plumbing supplies, and textile services industries. The various methods of route optimization and the subsequent cost calculation per transport unit and for each individual customer stop are the main focus of the book. Dr. Jürgen Stausberg describes how the changes associated with digitization can be communicated to dispatchers, controllers, planners and drivers based on his many years of experience as an expert.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Why this book?

Terms

Route planning

Telematics

Digitization

Sensors

Why is the digitalization of truck fleets such a topic today?

The framework conditions have changed

Fast data transmission via mobile radio

Truck interfaces are improved

Tacho data can be retrieved

More powerful sensors

Law requires action

Industry-specific requirements

Food/ fresh food service

Mill

Industrial bakery

Sanitary wholesale

Construction logistics

Beverage wholesaler/ brewery

Recycling companies

Textile service

Vehicle transportation

Fuel trading

Stories from the field

Time window not updated

Odysseys cleared up

Wage injustice

Relief for the driver

Dummy leads to behavioral change

Waiting time abused

Detours into the traffic jam

Sales revenue with rising logistics costs

Clearing service not included

Mass data collected in the rain

Wandering without geocoding

Measured values, target values and motivation

Measured values

Target values

Achievement motivation

Process optimization

Carry out controlling and not control

Setting targets for the vehicle fleet

Develop optimization approaches

Check routes

Optimize routes

Determine delivery costs per customer

Introduce fleet controlling

Carry out driver feedback

Streamline administration

Reduce phone calls

Data/activities for the optimization process

Customer data

Unloading location

Customer type

Photos

Time window

Distance classes

Target costs

Transport quantity

Truck data

Technology

Costs

Data on the driver

Tour dates

Times and services

Logistics key figures

Driving and rest times

Selected users

Controller

Workshop manager

Personnel department

Sales

Managing Director

Selection decision for telematics systems

What are the efficiency benefits?

What options are there?

Variant class 1: Locating base

Variant class 2: FMS telematics

Variant class 3: Video telematics

Variant class 4: Order management with tablet

You should pay attention to this!

Safety rules for truck drivers

The 10 max eighty rules for truck drivers

The Max 80 safety register

How should we communicate?

Information for drivers

Information for the dispatcher

Information to the controller

Information to the managing director

What remains at the bottom line

The author

Bibliography

List of illustrations

2025

How to use cloud services to optimize truck fleets and reduce costs by digitizing processes.

Jürgen Stausberg

WHY THIS BOOK?

Companies with a fleet of vehicles, e.g. from the brewery, bakery, mill, construction logistics, building materials trade, recycling, beverage wholesale, fresh produce service, sanitary wholesale and textile service sectors, often ask themselves where costs can be saved in the fleet and/or where performance can be increased.

This book describes a way to identify cost-cutting potential in the vehicle fleet.

Truck route planning with telematics are the key elements for achieving efficiency gains in the fleet.

Companies that regularly supply customers often have fixed routes. Particularly in times of fluctuating delivery volumes due to the economy, pandemic, weather conditions, etc., fixed routes inevitably lead to empty runs by trucks. Drivers often only know their route and with fewer loads, the costs per transport unit increase for the same mileage.

This book is about counteracting this development. It shows how modern digitalization methods can be used to manage a fleet more efficiently and reduce costs.

Route optimization with telematics helps to find starting points for improvements in your own company'sfleet and to eliminate weak points. Modern systems and service solutions from the field of telematics are presented that can help with this.

The book is aimed at fleet managers from different sectors. Not all of the starting points presented are relevant for every industry. Beverage wholesalers will have a different focus than building materials wholesalers, for example. Telematics offers different components depending on the industry.

TERMS

Route planning

If you ask Wikipedia for the definition of Route planning, you get the following answer: Tour planning is a planning process in which (transport) orders are combined into tours and put into a sequence. A tour is usually carried out by one person or one vehicle. This planning process is important wherever a large number of orders and tours have to be planned. Examples include the delivery of goods to a retailer's branches, the collection of post, refuse collection, passenger transportation and the deployment of service personnel.

The aim of route planning is, for example, to minimize the number of vehicles used, the distance covered, the operating time, CO2 emissions or a more complex cost function. In the standard route planning problem, all starting and destination points are located in a depot where a limited number of identical vehicles with limited capacity are usually available. Other variants take into account additional restrictions such as time windows, several depots or arbitrary start and destination points. (Wikipedia, Route Planning 2025)

Telematics

If you look at Wikipedia, the first sentence you will find is: Telematics (composed of telecommunications and information technology) is a technology that combines the fields of telecommunications and information technology.

Telematics is a broad term that is used in this book in connection with vehicle telematics.

In relation to the truck, this simply means IT, i.e. the processing of data relating to the truck and the transmission of data from and to the truck. This includes technical data from the vehicle, such as engine speed and diesel consumption, as well as position data and downtimes of the truck or order data with a connection to the navigation system.

The beginnings date back to the 1980s, when special on-board computers recorded the wheel revolutions and thus the kilometers driven and idle times. Special data cards, similar to today's driver cards - or even a cable connection from the truck to an electronic filling station - transmitted the data to the control center for evaluation.

Outdated? Or not? Because not much has changed in terms of data content and its use. But the technology is smaller, simpler and data transmission has been revolutionized with LTE, 4G, 5G, satellites, etc. GPS positioning for localizing and identifying thecustomer's stop or current driving position and the digital speedometer with its various connection options have also been added.

Today, such systems are often installed in 30 to 60 minutes or can be operated directly via the cigarette lighter without installation. In the past, installation took 4 to 8 hours. (Wikipedia, Telematics 2025)

Digitization

The best way to understand digitization in the vehicle fleet is to treat everything that was previously recorded in analog form on paper and then often copied as an electronic version.

Instead of on paper, the delivery bill is kept digitally on a tablet. (Wikipedia, Digitization 2025)

Sensors

A sensor is a technical component that measures certain physical or chemical properties (physical e.g. amount of heat, temperature, humidity, pressure, sound field variables, brightness, acceleration). The measured values are converted into electronic signals that can be processed further.

The following sensors are of particular importance for transport logistics: detection sensors, which today often work with Bluetooth and determine whether an object, e.g. a trailer, is in the vicinity of the truck. Temperature sensors that detect and transmit chamber temperatures on the loading area and fill level sensors that can determine when a container needs to be emptied, particularly in the case of waste containers. (Wikipedia, Sensors 2025)

Figure 1 Example of a temperature sensor

WHY IS THE DIGITALIZATION OF TRUCK FLEETS SUCH A TOPIC TODAY?

The framework conditions have changed

In the past, customers ordered on a fixed date and always ordered approximately the same quantities. The scheduling department assigned customers a delivery day, a standard truck and a standard driver. Truck navigation did not yet exist. The standard driver was instructed for the tour. Only he knew the customer's delivery conditions.

Today, customers are affected by strongly fluctuating customer groups, whether in restaurants due to the pandemic or VAT, or in canteens where many employees are suddenly working from home.