With Christmas right around the corner, the food distribution industry depends on reliable and cost-effective transport and logistics solutions to meet increasing customer demand. Especially throughout the festive season, efficient management of food logistics is essential to ensure shelves remain stocked and retailers remain satisfied.
Complete supply chain ownership has an outstandingly positive impact on a wholesalers ability to provide fast and efficient service during peak periods. Hiring a Scully RSV solves key demand challenges by supporting transportation ownership and control, and can greatly assist with the fulfillment of an above-average quantity of orders. Below are the key challenges, and how partnership with Scully RSV can relieve them.
Challenge One: DIFOT – Delivered In Full & On-Time
Manufacturers of consumer products are faced with the challenge of meeting strict delivery dates and deadlines set by their customers. Often, satisfying this deadline becomes difficult if collaboration and communication with key partners falters. Regardless of the reason, if you’re unable to meet the deadlines provided, your customers will be impacted.
To solve this challenge, shippers require dedicated transportation solutions which allow them to maintain more control when striving to meet customer deadlines. Reliable capacity and timely deliveries are essential for retaining important customers. While companies tend to turn towards private fleets to improve on-time delivery, this simply isn’t viable for smaller-scale companies. See the benefits of Scully RSV’s long term fleet solutions.
Challenge Two: Reducing Investment Risk
Investing in a private fleet brings about it’s own unique set of challenges, from increased capital expenditure, to depreciation, to monthly operating and maintenance expenses. While a private fleet also offers many advantages, a fluctuating seasonal market can do more harm than good where investment risk is involved.
Dedicated transport vehicles, which operate via a monthly lease rate, assist with better flexibility and control over shipments and eliminate investment risk entirely. By not having to accrue capital for purchasing vehicles in a lump payment, cash flow will become more even each month. This allows you to invest more into labour costs and focus on acquiring new projects.
Challenge Three: Visibility
Many supply chains use a variety of food logistics and transportation providers. As soon as an order or shipment moves onto another party, the visibility into this shipment is hindered. Without insight into a distributor’s fleet or drivers status, it becomes difficult to manage customer expectations and correctly manage operations.
Scully RSV leverages telematics to maintain a coordinated approach and simplify the lives of fleet managers, drivers and employers within the food logistics industry. This information can be used to track and manage vehicle information including vehicle temperature on the road, driver performance, food safety and fleet management costs.
Challenge Four: Maintain Food Safety
An increase in order quantity often means managers lose control and oversight of adequate food logistics procedures. When third parties are involved, distribution centres face the risk of incorrectly handled perishable food items. This significantly impacts the quality of food leaving the retailer and can consequently damage buyer relationships, regardless of where the fault occured.
To solve this, a refrigerated ute, van or truck becomes necessary to preserve the safety of food shipments over the Christmas period. Having access to your own transportation system assists managers with observing the quality and safety of food handling and delivery.
Scully’s refrigerated vehicles are capable of carrying products from +20°C to -20°C and are fitted with fibreglass bodies for premium insulation, higher payload capacity and superior structural integrity. We deliver customisable solutions so if you need to deliver both hot and cold products, we can fit your vehicle with adjustable curtains and dividers so you can effectively and safely partition various perishable food items.
Scully RSV: Not Just For Food Logistics
A refrigerated vehicle can be beneficial for more than just food logistics. It can benefit floral distribution businesses, frozen meat wholesalers, outdoor event caterers and even provide means of marketing your brand on the road. For more industries that benefit from refrigerated vehicles, read our blog, 3 (Surprising) Things that Require Refrigerated Courier Trucks.
Partner with Scully RSV For Better Management of Your Food Logistics Challenges This Christmas
Maintain food quality and safety, improve customer satisfaction and expand your business by hiring a Scully RSV for short-term or long-term hire periods. Whatever your budget, cargo, power, comfort, and body requirements, Scully RSV is sure to have the perfect vehicle for your needs! For more information on how you can exceed expectations with your Christmas food shipments this year, contact Scully RSV or check out our previous blogs:
