TRANSPORT & MATERIALS
HOW CAN A leading nationwide wholesaler improve its transport man- agement?
This was the question Stax Trade Centres pondered three years ago. Historically, the wholesaler used local, third-party hauliers to move its products between suppliers, branches and customer locations. But having doubled in size over the last decade, becoming a £120m-turnover business with six cash-and-carry trade centres around the cost-effective approach.
“We move a lot of product around the country, so if we can save on transport costs it makes a big difference to us,” explains Nigel Wright, operations director at Stax.
“However, we did not have experience of running a delivery system within Stax, and we didn’t compliance, or the overhead of managing the delivery operation.” Instead, Stax turned to Ryder, one of the UK’s biggest commercial vehicle contract hire and rental providers, and its Dedicated Delivery Solutions (DDS) service. Ryder DDS can provide customers with branded dedicated vehicles, including fuel and drivers, together with an on-site transport management team to deal with scheduling and routing, compliance, servicing and maintenance. In other words, Ryder DDS allows the business to concentrate on its core operations. “We wanted to take a short cut to learning about logistics management by partnering with the UK’s leading provider of commercial vehicle solutions, rather than make mistakes ourselves,” says Wright.
Trials
The relationship began with a trial in June 2014, using a single vehicle out of Stax’s Birmingham branch. Working from Stax’s delivery data, Ryder used an 18-tonne curtainsided trailer with tail-lift for the deliveries, managing the driver remotely.
“Over the six-month trial period, compared to the third party hauliers,” says Wright.
Ryder’s contract was extended, 18-tonne trucks, four tri-axle trailers, plus four tractor units. All the bodies lifts to help with palletised orders. Sixteen drivers are employed to work on the account, which Ryder manages through a central operations manager, a dedicated planning resource, and driver managers in each Stax location. Typically, Ryder’s drivers collect products from suppliers and deliver
BMJ January 2017
Ryder helps Stax make transport stack up
Stax Trade Centres has achieved impressive transport management to Ryder, its commercial vehicle provider.
Stax’s recent acquisition of Scottish of three trucks, one 18-tonne, one 12-tonne and one 7.5-tonne, plus three vans into the business.
them to Stax branches, and move stock around group locations as required. They also work on Stax’s delivered wholesale service. The drivers start at 5AM and make up to eight drops a day, depending on product and location, usually delivering up to 1,000 pallets a week.
Ryder’s use of route planning software and a telematics system has helped increase delivery volumes and reduce fuel costs per delivery, while allowing better management of expectations at delivery destinations. Stax still decides what products are shipped and when. “We control the loading of the vehicles and the pallet sizes, but the whole delivery process is managed by Ryder,” says Wright. “We receive management reports so we can review the costs of delivery for each location. Ryder makes sure the vehicles are full by route and through load optimisation, and we are now busier than we’ve ever been.”
The next step for Stax will be to extend the Ryder relationship to cover customer online ordering and electronic proof of delivery.
so we have subcontracted the whole operation to Ryder,” explains Wright. “We sold off the old vehicles and drivers have been ‘TUPE-ed’ across to Ryder. But we still view them as our employees even though they are employed by Ryder.
“Ryder now manages the whole of the distribution cost for our Scottish software to manage customer orders, as well as planning the deliveries. Drivers use tablets for delivery manifests and electronic proof of delivery. In time we would like to migrate to that level of service in our English branches too.”
Stax bottom line.
Service
“Compared to how we operated before with third-party hauliers, we are making considerable savings each year on internal transfers – collection of stock and deliveries to branches,” says Wright.
“Customer deliveries are achieving close to 100% utilisation and when I look at the P&L accounts for each branch, I can see that the carriage cost is reducing. Ryder’s service is supporting our businesses growth.”
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