If you transport products as part of your business model, then understanding how to expand your transportation network is crucial to your organization’s continued growth.
Being able to scale up your logistical effort quickly and efficiently will help your business to remain agile, adapt to changing market trends, and enable you to grow alongside your customer’s demands.
After all, it would be problematic to attract more customers towards your products, only to let them down by failing to deliver products on time – either because your supply lines are stretched or because your drivers cannot make sufficient journeys on a daily basis.
Moreover, expanding your transportation network may uncover inefficiencies that have been holding your business back from reaching optimum performance. This could be due to a lack of internal resources, inadequate tooling, or staff training, which could impact other areas of your company.
Here are some great tips for expanding your business’s transportation network:
Make sure your fleet is safe
When you are trying to expand your business’s transportation network, it is imperative that you have the necessary infrastructure in place to handle the extra routes, vehicles, and general strain placed on your transportation teams.
This means ensuring that each storage facility has the necessary equipment to load and unload goods safely and quickly (such as tail-lifts or forklift trucks), that your staff has been rigorously trained to complete tasks to the best of their abilities, and that you have enough vehicles to handle the additional demand.
Of course, a large part of your transportation network takes place on the open road, where incidents can lead to delays, vehicle damage, or personal injury. There is never a time when this is acceptable, so you should do everything in your power to reduce the chances of crashes involving your vehicles on the highway.
To achieve this, you could install a mobileye collision avoidance system, which senses potential incidents before they happen. This gives your drivers a warning, reducing the chance of the incident actually unfolding.
Moreover, you should never burden your drivers with too many routes or too tight a deadline, as this can encourage them to rush to their destinations or take unnecessary risks behind the wheel.
Try to double up on routes
The trick to expanding your business’s transportation network is to be clever with the system you already have. While the temptation is to buy a fleet of new vehicles or warehouses, the truth is that you could likely achieve your expansion goals by maximizing your current potential.
For example, you could make sure that each route takes in as many stops as possible, increasing the number of customers you serve without needing additional resources.
Consider using third-party logistical services
Another compelling approach to expanding your transportation network is to use third-party logistical services. Rather than buying more trucks, boats, or planes to transport your goods, you can hire another company to shift them for you, reducing your overall spending and ensuring you have immediate and direct access to additional vehicles if and when you need them.
This means that if you experience changing demand for your products, you won’t be stuck with vehicles that are gathering dust and costing you a great deal of money.
