Private Fleet Management: NPTC to the rescue

By John D. Schulz, Contributing Editor -- Logistics Management, 6/26/2007 1:37:00 PM

As fuel and other rising costs puts pressure on managers to focus on backhauls, the National Private Truck Council (NPTC) is unveiling a “member match” program to help private fleet managers find backhauls using the web—at no cost.

According to Gary Petty, president and CEO of NPTC, the council created the backhaul program to find strategic long-term relationships that make sense to fully deploy equipment to reciprocal partners. It’s also providing additional capacity for shippers seeking solutions. “This whole optimization notion will be driven home as highway infrastructure continues to shrink over the next 20 years. It’s an ever-increasing factor,” says Petty.

Preliminary analysis of NPTC’s newest private fleet benchmarking survey shows 25 percent of all private fleet miles are run empty—but that varies by distance. The survey showed that the longer the length of haul the better equipment balance.

For fleets with average lengths of haul greater than 500 miles, empty miles averaged just 17 percent. From 250-499 miles, empty miles averaged 28 percent. From 100 to 249 miles, empty miles averaged 31 percent. Under 100 miles, empty miles averaged 34 percent. Operating costs per mile by fleets with for-hire authority averaged 5 percent less than those without, the survey reports.

Assuming a private fleet has an operating cost of $1.50 per mile. The cost of delivering a load to a customer 500 miles away will be $1,500 (1,000 mile roundtrip calculated at $1.50 per mile). Net delivery cost will be $3 per mile ($1,500 divided by 500 miles). But if a private operator can generate a backhaul rather than returning empty, that cost is lowered substantially. Assuming a backhaul generates $500 revenue that cost drops to $1,000—lowering the net delivery cost to $2 per mile.