When the Kyoto Protocol was signed, the UK agreed to reduce emissions by five percent. 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 lower emissions? The simple answer is by helping them to reduce theirfuel consumption and thus improve their bottom line profitability. This is the aim of the Department for Transport's Freight Best Practice programme (FBPP). This behavioural change programme is unique across Europe and more advanced than other such programmes around the world such as the USA Smartway programme. The FBPP aims to help freight operator profitability by helping them save fuel. Fuel is a very significant component of operational costs for haulage operators (approximately 30% in most operations) and therefore reducing total fuel consumption is an inherent motivation. Reducing the amount of fuel consumed does have a knock-on environmental benefit by reducing the quantity of emissions produced (a litre of diesel producing 2.68kgs of CO2). The FBPP methodology provides free information on how organisations can create operational efficiencies to monitor and thus successfully reduce fuel consumption. Putting this theory into practice has been the major challenge for the FBPP. 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. The variations between different operations efficiency can be significant, for example in the next day parcel delivery sector, the proportion of empty running varies betweenfleets from zero to fifty percent of the time. Once the factors that influence this can be understood, they can be used to help managers to modify their operations. The FBPP also provides a mechanism for the fleet managerto allow accurate measurement of the key performance indicators within their own fleet, or internally benchmark. The Fleet Performance Management Tool is a PC based software tool (complete with manual) to allow operators to track fleet performance week on week for 22 KPIs. This tool can be usedto measure performance for up to 25 vehicles for up to a two-year period.All this information is made available free of charge through a number ofchannels, such as attendance and exhibition at major industry events, including the annual Commercial Vehicle Show (CVS), attendance at industry group events such as Road Haulage Association and Freight Transport Association member meetings and through a dedicated programme website (www.freightbestpractice.org.uk). In a recent independent assessment of the English programme it was shown that the Freight Best Practice programme has helped save industry £83m over the past 2 years. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
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