Freight best practice - the road to freight operational efficiency.

When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, the UK agreed to reduce emissions by 5%. The Government expected all sectors to do their bit towards cutting emissions. As the haulage sector makes up 8% of all emissions, it was a critical target for improvements in environmental performance. So, how do you get commercial transport operators to comply with government aims to loweremissions? The simple answer is helping them to reduce their fuel consumption and thus improve their bottom line profitability. This is the aim of the Department for Transports Freight Best Practice programme (FBPP). Thisbehavioural change programme is unique across Europe and more advanced than other such programmes around the world such as the USA's Smartway programme. A free information framework has been developed, aimed at all workers in the haulage industry. Some information is aimed at drivers, in a series of pocket guides and training materials. However the majority of information is aimed at transport managers. This material includes a series of guides to facilitate external benchmarking against others in a range of sectors (such as food, next day parcel delivery, and pallet networks) and to provide information on best-in-class performers. These publications are supported by software tools, to assist with practical internal benchmarking,within the fleet. This provides them with suggested methodology and resources to accurately monitor the performance of their fleet, as measurement and understanding are the first steps towards effective operational performance management. To take the example of external benchmarking first, a series of guides have been produced with information gathered by survey fromkey players in a range of industry sectors. For each, a separate guide has been produced, presenting the results of the same five key performance indicators (KPIs), these are: vehicle fill, empty running, time utilisation, deviations from schedule and fuel consumption. The FBPP also provides a mechanism for the fleet manager to allow accurate measurement of the KPIs within their own fleet, or internally benchmark. The Fleet Performance Management Tool (FPMT) is a PC based software tool (complete with manual) to allow operators to track fleet performance week on week for 22 KPIs. The haulage industry tends to be naturally suspicious of governmental policy impacts on their industry; however this programme has received much positivefeedback. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.