How fleet tech can help you sell unused courier space and drive a new revenue stream

Efficient route planning is only the start of the benefits of location-enabled data. For businesses, a host of new revenue streams await, including renting unused truck space.

In the world of delivery, space is money. Yet, according to a European Commission report, as much as a quarter of the trucks driving on European roads are completely empty, while those that do have goods in them are, on average, only half full. The statistics for the United States paint a similar picture.

For businesses, this unused space translates into lost revenue. But location technology is helping to provide fleet managers with invaluable insights that can help them capitalize on this lost space to minimize costs and even create profitable new revenue streams.

A quarter of trucks on the road are empty, while the rest are only half full. Could location technology help businesses unlock this valuable real estate?

One company that is using the power of data for its customers is Taiwan-based 3Drens. Using IoT, predictive analysis and machine learning to improve the decision-making process, its mobility management platform gives smaller eCommerce retailers the ability to rent unused space from larger logistics providers. It means smaller companies without logistics capability can piggyback on larger companies' payloads, a win-win for both parties.

Another of 3Drens' clients, an electric scooter rental company in Southeast Asia, used location technology to generate a heat map showing where the scooters traveled most often, allowing the company to strike partnerships and advertising opportunities with local businesses such as restaurants, retailers and venues.

Read more: Waste not want not: SpaceFill helps you turn warehouse space into profit

These are just a couple of examples of how location technology and data can go beyond the day-to-day business of efficient route planning, and help you make smarter decisions that benefit your customers, your drivers and your bottom line.

Because, with as much as 50% of the cost of delivery occurring at the last-mile stage, and with the popularity in delivery surging, the stresses of last-mile are only going to get worse, not better, believes Alex Osaki, Product Marketing Manager at HERE.

For instance, a report by the World Economic Forum reveals urban traffic from delivery vehicles is predicted to increase by 36% in the world's top 100 cities by 2030, with the demand for urban last-mile delivery set to grow by 78% over the same period. The result is emissions up by a third, and 11 minutes added to the average commute.

Read more: What customers want now from last-mile delivery - and how you can meet those demands

Applications such as HERE Last Mile and Fleet Management solutions go beyond traditional route planning to automate and simplify the process of delivery, giving you greater insight into your last-mile logistics scheduling. With features such as demand planning, you know where the bottlenecks are around volume, capacity, ETAs and location in real-time.

Speaking about the value of location technology in helping to alleviate some of these issues, Alex says: “Fleets tend to be very small, and they tend to operate on pretty low margins, so there's a lot of pressure to keep costs down and maybe some hesitancy to adopt new technologies." But, he adds, location technology can help businesses “proactively take these decisions to save money and benefit drivers."

He believes this data-driven logistics planning, facilitated by location technology, is both an emerging opportunity and a potential new economy. “There is a growing awareness of the ways that a lack of visibility has led to poor capacity planning, either by not understanding the full scope of your own capacity and how it's being used, or how it can be optimized. The more information we can provide access to, the easier it is for companies to make those decisions."

One of the benefits of Fleet Management solutions is how it democratizes access to data that would have in the past only been available to larger organizations. “Being able to provide smaller fleets or startups with the same kind of enterprise-grade information, the same kind of data quality, the same kind of performance and ability, that you would have as a major enterprise customer is a real differentiation," adds Alex.