What Congestion Costs the Trucking Industry Rastrac Team | Sep 14, 2016 10:03:00 AM

For many fleet managers, traffic congestion on the highways and byways of the roads used by their trucks is a simple fact of life. Fleet managers are often forced to account for delays caused by heavy traffic congestion in their timetables, and to budget for wasted fuel as trucks sit idle on congested roads.

But, just how much does congestion on America’s roadways cost the trucking industry? More specifically, how much is it costing your business?

The Cost of Congestion: Fuel

According to statistics cited in an American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) paper, “trucks transported nearly 10 billion tons of freight representing over two-thirds (68.8 percent) of total domestic tonnage shipped, and traveled more than 279 billion miles on the nation’s roadway network in 2014.”

All told, congestion along those 279 billion miles of road cost the trucking industry “the equivalent of 264,781 commercial truck drivers sitting idle for an entire working year,” which “equated to just over $49.6 billion in increased operational costs.”

One of the major contributing factors to this increase in costs is that while those drivers are sitting idle in heavy traffic, their semis are still burning fuel; upwards of 2 gallons of diesel an hour depending on engine displacement.

So, one way to try to determine the impact of traffic congestion on your fleet is to monitor how much time each truck spends in idle each year, and multiply it by the average idle fuel consumption of each truck in the fleet, then multiply that by the average cost of fuel for your fleet vehicles.

Naturally, there are a lot of variables, such as whether drivers are using air conditioning in idle, the cost of gas in the state or states you operate in, and the fuel efficiency of each truck in your vehicle fleet.

But, the effects of traffic congestion can go beyond just wasting fuel sitting idle in traffic.

The Cost of Congestion: Delays

Especially bad traffic conditions can do worse than simply burn excess fuel. In some severe cases, traffic congestion, particularly along multi-state travel routes, can cause shipments to be late.

The impact of such traffic-related delays can vary greatly based on your business. For some businesses, a truck arriving a few hours or even a day late is not a major issue—for others, it can lead to severe losses as claims are filed or perishable cargo spoils.

So, when assessing how much traffic-related delays cost your company, it’s important to consider variables for your delivery timetables, contractual agreements regarding delays, and how time-sensitive your shipments are—in addition to the risk of losing customers over these delays.

Avoiding Congestion and its Costs

Because of the severe impact traffic congestion can have, many transportation fleet managers try their best to avoid congestion. This can be done in a few different ways, such as:

• Having drivers avoid the roads and rest during peak traffic hours near large municipal centers
• Re-routing drivers around roads and counties with routine traffic jams
• Setting up delivery times that avoid peak traffic hours

The problem is that not all shipments can be completed during off-hours—and some traffic jams can strike without warning in areas that don’t normally have heavy traffic.

Things like auto accidents, road maintenance, and local events can spontaneously create traffic congestion—ruining your “perfect” pre-planned route that was supposed to avoid traffic. In these cases, you need the ability to quickly re-route vehicles so they can get out of the rolling parking lot and back on their way to efficiently moving cargo.

Here’s where GPS tracking for fleet vehicles can be a massive help.

With GPS fleet tracking, you can monitor where all of your assets in the field are, and quickly provide drivers with alternate routes and detours on the fly to avoid the worst traffic jams. This keeps your fleet moving forward and reduces the fuel wasted on engine idling.

In a worst-case scenario, you can reach out to a customer and explain that the truck is stuck in traffic and arrange a new delivery schedule if necessary. This helps keep your customers in the loop and demonstrates a higher level of service and care that can improve customer retention in the face of bad traffic delays.

Make your fleet more efficient and minimize the costs of congestion today using GPS truck tracking for your fleet today!