Transport survey highlights cost concerns and inefficiency
Transportation in the furniture industry is largely cost-driven and has a lot of spare capacity, results from a survey conducted by FIRA have found. There is still time to have your say!
Thirty respondents completed a questionnaire on FIRA’s website over the past three weeks, and the answers may help develop future strategy.
All 30 said they had their own transport operation, with half owning their vehicles, 8 leasing theirs and the rest having a mix of owned and leased. These ranged from 18 tonne articulated lorries to motorbikes (which we hope aren’t being used to deliver sofas!).
While half of those surveyed said they carried out multiple delivery drops, the other half reported single loads or a mix of both. 70% said they had spare capacity, meaning the industry as a whole could make far more efficient use of haulage.
The survey asked respondents to rank certain factors by their importance to the transport operation [NB full results below]:
Cost
Convenience
Reliability
Exclusivity
Speed
Environmental considerations
43% said cost was the most important factor, with a further 30% ranking it second. Conversely, 43% rated environmental considerations the least important, with a further 27% saying it was the next least important. Reliability was considered the second most important factor overall, followed by convenience, speed, exclusivity. These results suggest that companies might be willing to work together to distribute their products as long as it is cost effective and reliable to do so.
Transport accounts for an average of 9.1% of turnover, ranging from an incredible 75% to as little as 1.5%.
Perhaps the most telling part of the results was in answer to the question ‘What lessons have you learned in dealing with transportation?’
Many referred to local services being preferable to national, with a need for more hubs around the UK to act as bases for localised deliveries. Others said national carriers were out of the question due to the size/fragility of the product; this resulted in the costly and inefficient transportation of smaller loads. A number also said it was better to own rather than lease vehicles, as this enabled a better level of service; however, one respondent preferred to lease, on the basis of maintenance costs.
“If we were starting over again we would start with a high quality hauler instead of the cheapest,” said one, while another extolled the virtues of furniture specialist carriers, as this “significantly reduces damage claims”. One final word of advice was “Never underestimate traffic on the M25 and M6!”
Full results for the factors question based on aggregated score and the average of 30 responses was:
