Keeping your fleet on the road is without doubt the biggest and most important challenge facing businesses in transport and logistics (T&L). During the recent Uptime Champions session during the Truck And Fleet Conference UAE, the audience had the chance to hear from their peers on both the operation and supply side of the sector to get their advice and learn the approaches they are taking to get their most from their vehicle fleets.
Moderated by Vishal Pandey, partner – Automotive and Mobility Business, Glasgow Analytics Consulting Group, the panel featured local experts representing both fleets and aftermarket specialists in the local market, including: Nicholas Brooks, MD, Zaeto; Mahir Bousselham, regional technical manager, Middle East & Africa; Valvoline Holdings BV, Feras Jawhari, fleet and proactive solutions manager, Emerging Markets, Goodyear, Mohamed Al Zeftawi, GM, Al Masaood Commercial Vehicles & Equipment, Martin Roberts, transport manager, Momentum Logistics and Richard Zielinski, owner and director, Mining Tech & Logistics FZC.
Asset-owning transport operator Momentum Logistics runs one of the biggest fleets of Scania trucks in the region. Transport manager Martin Roberts is responsible for the firm’s operations in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the US. Roberts brings vast experience to the panel and has been in the region for over a decade and with Momentum for the past seven years. Prior to that, he worked for 16 years at one of the leading transport companies in the UK.
The GCC market is often perceived as being a slow adopter of cutting edge technology that could improve fleet efficiency and reduce accidents. Casting his eye over high tech solutions currently available on the market, he believes that there is a huge chasm between the fleets that are driving safely on the road and the thousands of owner/operators in the market that are falling far short of those standards. In a price-sensitive market, the corners they are cutting risks lives on the road and is helping to keep contract prices low.
“There’s now some fantastic safety devices that are being added by the manufacturers and they’re all there and available. But, we’re sitting in a market that’s a long way behind Europe. We, as a company are buying brand new trucks, our average age of our fleet on the road at the moment is 3.5 years, so we’re not averse to investing,” he states. “But when you’re talking about the extra thousands and thousands of dollars for all these added driver aids, customers here don’t want to pay for it.
He adds: “We’re still sitting here with these owner/operators that are living in their truck which they’re not maintaining correctly in the first place and they’re not necessarily taking the correct insurance, etc. There’s really not a level playing field for us, they trade in fuel…you know it causes a problem for us with them operating in the market like that.”
According to Roberts, the difference between a fleet like Momentum Logistics and the owner/operators isn’t just about the age of their vehicles or the solutions they have on board, but the chasm between the owner/operators and fleets that need a rigorous programme of driver monitoring and training to support any investment they are making.
He says the biggest investment in terms of time should always be on your drivers.
“As a fleet operator, we can’t then turn around and think that safety is not important to us, so we have to attack it in a different way through driver training,” he continues. “We buy our trucks from Scania, they supply us with the driver training via their own trainer that comes out to us.”
“But that is not the end of it though. Because if we just sat there and think, ‘ah, the driver’s been trained, it’s fine’ and send him out, that’s not enough. So then we have our service providers Location Solutions, who provide us with telematics. (Through that system) We monitor the driver behaviour; monitor whether he’s accelerating hard; whether he is speeding; and whether he’s braking hard or cornering too fast.”
Momentum Logistics’ drivers are asked to rest and are not allowed to exceed their agreed hours on the road. While this is standard practice, frequently back-up by government legislation in many countries, this isn’t always the case in the region.
“There’s no driver hours legislation here. The drivers can – and will – work all the hours sent because they want to earn the maximum money… because they’re underpaid,” he says, before returning to his earlier point about contract values and hauling rates in the market.
“But, they’re underpaid because customers don’t want to pay the right money in the first place to bring that on. We are all in this vicious circle and until something changes with the way the markets operate, with how owner-drivers operate, we will not have customers realising that the lowest cost is not always the best way to go. Until that changes, we’re always going to be in the same situation and we will see us, year-after-year, having the same discussions saying the same things.”
Like Momentum Logistics, Mining Tech & Logistics FZC, is utilising a large fleet of Scania trucks at its limestone mine in the foothills of Jebel Jais close to the emirate of Fujairah. Owner and director Richard Zielinski, says the company exports the majority of its steel-grade limestone, as well as clinker, to the Indian market.
“As you can imagine working in the mountains with those steep gradients we need to use heavy duty trucks,” he tells the audience.
Zielinski says that his fleet has learned to lean into the expertise of the OEMs and aftermarket companies that are supplying it.
“As an end-user, running a fleet is a very difficult job. General George Patton from World War II used to say you go to war with the weapons you have but it’s the men who win the war,” he says. “And really, I feel that running a fleet is like going to war every day and it’s not just the operators that we depend on but it’s our mechanics; the dealers, our service providers – people that are bringing these types of technologies to us. So, you have to put this together, you have to coordinate this. All these technologies that we’re putting in the trucks are amazing and great but getting them to be implemented by our team is always a challenge.”
Uptime is crucial to an operation like Mining Tech & Logistics, where the trucks are essential to ensure the flow of materials continues unabated and narrow profit margins are maintained. Much of Zielinski’s work over the past year has been centred on bringing more resilience to the business as it has faced up to the challenge of dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and, what he describes as, economic headwinds; as well as the historic problems that fleets will always face such as the juggling of maintenance for vehicles, breakdowns and the need to continually allow for time loss due to tyre replacement.
“Resiliency means operating under difficult conditions,” he says. “As transporters and as end-users, we have to develop this resilience, not by ourselves, but with our partners and with the dealers. And we need redundancy which, in this context, is about having more than you need… being able to buy spare parts from the open market; having extra vehicles on stand by; having extra operators.
“This resiliency and this redundancy is something that technology is bringing to the table and it allows us to really allows us to increase our uptime.”
One potentially helpful route for fleets could be for OEMs, dealers and suppliers to offer a fixed cost subscription model enabling control of the outgoings of their business.
“A lot of things are going onto this subscription-based model because for cash flow, it allows me to look at my business and control that a little bit more precisely,” says Zielinski.
“Also I can scale up a little easier, if I take things on subscription. I would go a step further, why do we need to be the owners of the trucks in the end? I think in 10, 20, 25 years. There’s going to be products, maybe even sooner, where we can rent these trucks from the dealers or maybe from the manufacturer themselves.
“We’ve considered that on some of the heavy equipment – the excavators and the dump trucks. It’s a compelling financial product for us to do this. We’re all doing it in our daily lot, with things like Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and things like this. So yeah, it’s coming.
Momentum Logistics’ Martin Roberts says that when his firm bought its latest tranche of trucks from Scania it agreed a service package which is paid on a cost per kilometre bases.
“That way, for us, as an operating cost, we know the cost of the maintenance. If the engine blows up, that’s still the cost of the maintenance.”
Another constant cost to fleets is tyre replacement and Momentum Logistics has conducted its own tyre trial to work out what suits the fleet best.
“Everyone will come and tell you that their tyres are the best value. Some fleet owners are looking and saying, this is the best tyre it’s only 500 Dirhams: this one’s bad because it’s 1,500 dirhams. We’ve got a trial with four, or five different suppliers at the moment. We look up what, what’s the life of the tyre? What’s the cost of the tyre? What’s the cost per kilometre? Once we know that, then we know what the best tyre is.
“You can bring in factors like these tyres have less friction and or these are more CO2 friendly, but, we’re in a region where that’s not something that everyone’s really taking seriously at the moment.”
In addition to its tractor replacement programme, Momentum Logistics has also replenished a major portion of its trailer fleet. This has allowed the firm to upgrade its efficiency and safety systems: “We’ve now got air suspension trailers, and ABS fitted.”
While he is happy to be in a position to let his fleet evolve, he feels like more work could be done to ensure that other fleets take safety seriously.
“When you go to Ras Al Khaimah, for example, if you’ve got three axles, you’ll pay more than if you’ve got two axles event though we are spreading the load over more axles. If it is more road-friendly and the right way to do it, there should be an incentive for that,” he states. “If you are putting on air suspension and you’re going to three axles, and you’ve got a lift axle – when you’re empty, you’re going to lift your axle – you’re going to save the tyre wear as well lessen the impact on the road and the climate. There are no incentives at the moment to try and push for that.”
While the industry waits for a push for tighter controls on vehicle standards, it can at least look for help from the aftermarket.
Lubricant specialist Valvoline has 150 years of history and expertise to fall back on. Much of its recent work has been to ensuring that its customers are provided with lubricants that are compatible with the latest after-treatment systems in the markket. Valvoline’s regional technical manager Mahir Bousselham has spent 13 years in the lubricants business “working closely with customers to deliver more value to them. And also, to work on reducing total cost of ownership.”
He adds: “And also work out their daily challenges are. There is also a lot of things happening on the new hardware. For example, the engines are getting downsized and we are using more turbo. We need the lubricants to be ready to support all our customers to reduce total cost of ownership. We know that lubricant is only 3% of the budget for a fleet company, but we can really deliver great value and reduce the total cost of ownership.”
Zaeto’s Nicholas Brooks explains his firm produces additives that can help reduce the cost of fuel and emissions: “In three months, we can save x amount of dollars on fuel from using an additive straight away”.
According to Brooks, it would be helpful if some loopholes were closed to prevent them from being exploited by driver-owners wanting to exploit the rules.
“The majority of trucks out there are not run by somebody like Martin. When we first came to the market, we spoke to the RTA about when a truck comes in for registration: that they check the tyres, they do the emissions test… but there’s actually no difference between the diesel test and the petrol test. So you’re not actually checking on nitrogen oxides.
“Also you’ve got guys that will rent you a set of tyres to go and do your registration and then you can hand them back an hour later and they will be rented out to somebody else. When you talk about efficiencies or benefits or energy’s costs and subscriptions to add value back into the business, the majority of people actually aren’t worried about it because it’s a cost that they’re not interested in.”
Goodyear’s emerging markets division is responsible for more than 70 countries from Pakistan, Afghanistan and central Asia towards Morocco and the whole of the African continent. Fleet & Proactive solutions manager Feras Jawhari has been in the automotive industry, “mainly trucks for more than 13 years” and is helping to lead the firm’s role in the digitalisation of the region.
Stating that Goodyear’s own studies have shown that tyres are 20% of a fleet’s costs, he adds: “we try to serve our fleets by providing fleets solutions such as telematics. One of the things, we have tried to do during the pandemic is to provide customers with unique solutions which can help them to increase the efficiency on the operation. For example, you have one solution called the truck drive over reader where you can fully inspect truck within 20 seconds with no need for any human interaction. So that helps the fleets to avoid using more workers in a time where people are having to work from home. We are also using the drone technology to help fleets inspects tyres and locate trucks and trailers in the yard.”
He believes that the Saudi market stands as an example of where mandated technology is helping to improve standards and is likely to be adopted elsewhere.
“Saudi Arabia is probably one of the biggest markets in our region. It is now mandatory to have a tracking system in each truck. Before tracking would only be on the trucks of Saudi Aramco which are used in the oil industry. I believe this is a good movement and this is where the industry is heading.
“As fleet owners or service solution providers we want to know exactly what’s going on. I believe there have been some studies with ESME in the UAE about this and it is likely that all the trucks should be this way in the future: traceable, the time the driver spend behind the steering wheel monitored; the speed limits; braking forces; and so. I believe in a way, it is helping all of us as users, service providers, as well as the government to move forward, more efficiently and safer.”
