Blended Fleets

Private Fleet – BOLT provides the tools to measure, record and justify private fleets

Dedicated Carrier – You have the ability to define common metrics and measurements across multiple carriers as well as a comparison to the private fleet.

Preferred Carrier – Enabling a subset of private fleet and dedicated metrics to lane preferred carriers

MANAGING BLENDED FLEETS

Transportation Industry Leaders state that the actual cost of maintaining and operating fleets has almost no room to reduce costs.  However, transportation can and must step up to provide better efficiency for In Transit Inventory Management.  Accurate, real time, and consistent metrics can be used to identify the best transportation alternative (including cost of In Transit Inventory) available and applicable to all of their freight movement.

Managing Blended Fleets is the key to this.  It is critical to develop a comprehensive and objective set of metrics for monitoring a private fleet, multiple dedicated carriers, and selected lane carriers.  Too much time is spent compiling data from numerous spreadsheets that are often incomplete and inaccurate.  Pickup and delivery information needs to be captured by any combination of the above described fleets.  Included in the desired metrics is On Time Delivery, Over, Short and Damaged Product, Returns with correct Return Authorizations and packaging material such as racks and pallets.

Working in coordination with our On Board Computer Partners (see the current list) BOLT has developed a comprehensive system for collecting, assimilating, and presenting freight movements. BOLT’s Blended Fleet Management system consists of the following components:

• Shipper (Company Transportation Manager)
  • BOLT Fleet Data Warehouse
• Private Fleet 
  • BOLT Fleet Management System
  • OBCs (can be a mixture of approved providers)
  • All metrics above captured and recorded
• Dedicated Carrier
  •  BOLT Fleet Management System supporting multiple shippers
  • OBCs (can be a mixture of  approved providers)
  • All metrics above captured and recorded
• Selected Lane Carriers
  • OBCs (can be a mixture of  approved providers)
  • Only arrival and departure stop information is captured at this level

Each carrier has a completely independent and secured database for the operation of their dedicated trucks.  Information is captured (real time) from Onboard Computers and is immediately available to the carrier along with detailed reports.  Each carrier site is “swept” once per day and raw data is transmitted to a BOLT Fleet Data Warehouse.  The same information is reported to the private fleet with the exception of carrier specific information. The carriers have 3 – 4 hours to remedy an issue before it can be seen in corporate.  Dedicated carriers can provide detailed information to any number of Shippers that have a BOLT Data Warehouse.

Private Fleet management can look at any one carrier, a summary of all carriers, or a corporate roll-up of all information.  Carriers can be compared relative to performance in meeting customer expectations, efficiency, and managing packaging material.  Orders are tracked and reports are generated on a Purchase Order level allowing sales information to be tied to exact delivery information.