SUSTAINABILITY
drawn from geospatial data , and IoT ( Internet of Things ) devices , such as vehicle trackers . One of the areas Tang is focused on is improving efficiency by reducing the empty running of road freight . Empty running often happens on one leg of a journey , when freight is offloaded and not reloaded with anything for its return journey . It ’ s believed that , in the road haulage sector , empty running is as high as 20 %, and this doesn ’ t take into account partial loads .
‘ Empty running ’ in haulage is huge waste of energy “ This is a problem not only for carriers who are looking to optimise their fleet , but also shippers who may be struggling to find capacity ,” says Tang . “ Not to mention the carbon footprint for both .”
Tang says addressing this issue has the potential to solve two of the biggest issues in commercial transport : cutting carbon emissions and unlocking extra capacity to alleviate some of the pressure on supply chains .
Tang says a degree of empty running is “ inescapable ”, but insists that , with better planning and the right technology , “ we can reduce it to what is considered a more efficient and sustainable level ”.
She adds : “ This can be achieved with quality data analysis . A good model can produce a better quality of match compared to the traditional labour-intensive brokerage method .”
Tang says that the biggest barrier to tackling empty running is visibility across the commercial road transport network . “ The more visibility we have , the more we can optimise things through data analysis and connecting the various parties ,” she explains .
“ For shippers , digitalisation makes logistics much more transparent and gives them better visibility of where their shipments are ,” says Tang . “ They will also see their costs coming down due to the network efficiency .”
She adds : “ For carriers , it allows them to better plan their journeys , including accessing new revenue by taking on jobs they might not otherwise have access to .
“ A major part of the solution is onboarding carriers and showing them the benefit of being involved in a wider network . Transport is a really fragmented industry , so we can only achieve proper gains if we have a
96 July 2022