4 Struggles in the Transportation Logistics Industry

In our last blog post, we spoke about the struggles often experienced by hospitality businesses. But that’s not the only industry facing multiple difficulties optimising for the digital age. In fact, the transportation and logistics industry also encounters its fair share of obstacles.

In this article, we’re going to explore the common struggles businesses in the transport and logistics industry encounter.

Unfortunately, it’s common that many truck drivers are involved in road accidents. According to a report by Safe Work Australia, the transport and logistics industry suffers from the highest rate of workplace injuries and accidents in the entire country.

Many factors play a role in these statistics. From incredibly long hours of work, extensive commutes, to lack of sleep and the pressure to continue driving to ensure a timely delivery (despite being severely fatigued). It’s no wonder we get harrowing results like this.

However, when you think about physical distance between employer and employee, it’s physically impossible for management to know the wellbeing status of their drivers in real time. This is where the power of IoT really shines.

With the right technology, managers will be able to take meaningful actions like diversifying rosters, hiring more employees or even pressing pause to simply check in on a tired employee. And they can do this with the reassurance that the data supports their actions.

When you’re looking after many employees, driver shortage is a common struggle to have. Yet, there is a chance you may not even notice it. It isn’t until problems occur, for example driver fatigue and delayed deliveries, that you realise perhaps your current staff are stretched thin.

That said, hiring more staff is a big decision to make it so it’s understandable if you’re unsure as to whether or not that’s the right step forward. Using a digital platform that stores employee profiles with valuable information will definitely benefit you in the long run, particularly if it shows information like how many deliveries they made, how long each drive took and the distance between deliveries. Then cross reference this against the amount of orders your business receives.

If deliveries are taking longer than usual or products aren't being shipped out fast enough, the problem most likely lies in the amount of staff you have. Therefore, hiring more staff would be the right way to go based on your data. Your employees are trying their best to make it on time, but factors like distance and traffic severely affect quality of service. More hands on deck equals more customer touchpoints addressed.

With so many offsite employees in different areas, getting a real-time view of your entire operation can be a struggle for any organisation in the transportation and logistics industry. Yet, true visibility is one of the best ways to optimise operations.

Using a digital dashboard that is specifically engineered for business intelligence is your saving grace. These platforms help you visualise your resources—from how those resources are being used to whether they are benefiting your business or not. In fact, our business intelligence platform, Motionboard, has the capability to do this.

This valuable information gives you the power to discover hurdles, obstacles and inefficiencies that may be impacting your business. You can then address these concerns by changing them while having the confidence to do so because you’ll be supported by the data.