How to Optimize Your Dedicated Fleet [Benefits + Strategies]

Managing a dedicated fleet brings several benefits. It offers predictability, guaranteed capacity, and better visibility into shipments. Dedicated carriers can also save a lot by securing the right lanes and loads. Automating decisions is crucial to keep optimizing your fleet over time.

Most dedicated fleets don’t start as a way to cut costs. They usually arise from a need for service, capacity, or flexibility. Once a fleet is in place, it often becomes part of the company’s routine—whether it’s cost-effective or not. That’s why it’s important to regularly review your fleet. This applies whether you already have one or are just getting started.

Using the eLogii platform can help you improve your current fleet or decide if starting a dedicated fleet is the right move for your business. An optimization solution for your dedicated fleet can help you develop an ideal fleet strategy, which includes:

• Fleet size
• Delivery areas
• Main routes
• Service window strategies
• And more

eLogii not only helps you create the right strategy but also assists you in implementing those plans smoothly.

Keep reading to discover optimization strategies for dedicated carriers. If you want to learn more about using eLogii to make confident decisions about optimizing your dedicated fleet, feel free to contact us.

Key Questions to Consider Before Launching Dedicated Fleet Operations

Choosing the right direction for your business requires careful planning and assessment of your strategic needs. As mentioned earlier, fleets can arise from genuine needs or simply from perceptions. Organizations should always base their fleet decisions on actual needs. To do this, it’s important to start by asking the right questions.

If you’re thinking about starting a dedicated service, these four questions can help you determine if your need is genuine:

• Are contract carriers easily available for the routes I need to cover?
• Do I need to offer services that aren’t commonly found in the contract carrier market? (Examples include back-of-store deliveries, "key drop" deliveries, special security requirements, driver assembly services, and high drop counts or small drop sizes.)
• Do short distances and high repeatability lead to better use?
• Is the fleet option cost-effective compared to other available choices?

The last question is the most crucial, but it’s often the hardest to answer. Fortunately, with modern technology and Artificial Decision Intelligence, you can gain advanced insights to help you answer this important question and others.

Benefits of Conducting a Dedicated Fleet Optimization Analysis

An advanced solution can analyze your historical data, driver requirements, and other factors to provide valuable insights for optimizing your dedicated fleet. The right technology can help you identify:

• The ideal fleet size to maximize value.
• The most strategic locations for your domiciles.
• The lanes and volumes best suited to a specific fleet size and common carriage.

Advanced planning technology can also assist in conducting a fleet analysis. This helps you understand the effects of key operational constraints and long-term planning initiatives. For example, a sensitivity analysis can take into account factors such as shipment and load visibility, hours of operation, the effects of drop trailer programs, transit time or road speed adjustments, rate and fuel inflation, and growth strategies.

Continuous Optimization of Your Dedicated Fleet

Optimizing your dedicated fleet isn’t just important when deciding whether to start one. Regular evaluations of your dedicated fleet are essential to ensure it stays cost-effective and appropriately sized. Over time, many fleets become ingrained in a company’s culture, which is fine as long as they continue to provide value. Ongoing fleet optimization analysis helps you determine if that value still exists.

Strategic route planning and optimization tools, like those from eLogii, can help you perform two types of analysis. First, they assist with in-depth studies that inform long-term strategic decisions. Think of this first type of analysis as focusing on the big picture, guiding decisions that will affect your fleet over months or years.

Second, these solutions can assist with quick analyses for shorter-term decision-making. This includes making more detailed decisions that may need to be addressed within weeks or even days.

As mentioned earlier, these analyses can help you confidently answer questions about fleet size, delivery areas, main routes, service window strategies, and other important factors. Without real-time optimization, you risk developing fleets that are neither cost-effective nor appropriately sized.

Connecting Planning to Execution

Planning is crucial for developing a strategy that leads to positive business results, including cost savings. Yet, even the best plans are useless without the ability to implement them and achieve those important outcomes.

The eLogii platform provides a smooth transition from strategic planning to execution. For instance, eLogii helps you answer questions such as:

• Should we have (or create) a dedicated fleet?
• What’s the ideal size for our dedicated fleet?
• What are the appropriate volumes, rates, and lanes?

Once you have answers to your strategic "what-if" questions, you can quickly put them into action. By automating dispatch decisions with eLogii, you can ensure that every driver-to-load match meets your network requirements and current commitments. Through decision automation, eLogii customers are experiencing significant productivity gains. This allows them to handle more volume without hiring extra staff. Automation is helping fleets improve their operations and elevate employees as they move away from routine planning tasks.

It's important to regularly re-evaluate your dedicated fleet based on new information and changing conditions. During these reviews, ask questions like, "Are we still making the right decisions with our dedicated fleet?" and "Are we still executing efficiently and effectively based on the latest information and conditions?"

eLogii route optimization software stands out in the market by providing solutions that enable fleet management to:

• Analyze strategic planning decisions
• Automate and optimize daily decisions
• Implement plans smoothly

These solutions continue to support your organization as it regularly evaluates its dedicated fleet. This ensures the fleet is delivering value while maximizing use and revenue potential.

Make Informed Decisions About Your Dedicated Fleet with eLogii

Avoid the mistake of creating a dedicated fleet based on perceived needs or keeping a fleet just because it's part of your organization's culture. Dedicated fleet optimization allows for regular evaluations and data-driven analysis of your network, ensuring it aligns with your most important internal priorities. By automating and optimizing the decisions made by your dedicated fleet team, you can create the most efficient routes, lower costs, and increase loaded miles.

eLogii route optimization software enables you to optimize specific tasks or benefit from automatic optimization of your dedicated fleet. Schedule a demo to see how fleet optimization can enhance your business.