What Is Fleet Elasticity?

Fleet elasticity is a term that is becoming more prevalent in the delivery and logistics industry. But what is fleet elasticity?

Fleet elasticity is the ability to rapidly adjust fleet size and composition in response to changes in demand. In other words, it's the ability to be flexible and adapt quickly to fluctuations in business needs.

By partnering with the right logistics provider, companies can achieve fleet elasticity. The logistics provider is responsible for supplying an elastic fleet and managing all operations related to delivery. The elastic fleet is available on call to make any delivery - rapid deliveries, LTL/PTL/FTL freight, recurring deliveries, etc.

Fleet elasticity is extremely valuable for companies seeking to increase efficiency and reduce overhead costs such as fleet maintenance and insurance.

What Are the Costs of Inflexible Fleet Operations?

Owning and operating a fleet is one of the most significant blows to your revenue. However, an elastic fleet of outsourced vehicles drastically reduces the financial impact by putting heavy operational lifting on the logistics provider.

When you rely solely on an in-house fleet, you incur fixed costs such as vehicle purchasing, fleet maintenance and insurance, payroll, benefits, and insurance.

When you can effortlessly modify your fleet size, you can more easily match fleet utilization to customer demand. A flexible fleet matches an outsourced vehicle and insured driver to streamline your operations and reduce the high costs associated with owning and operating your own fleet.

Examples of Fleet Elasticity in Action

A fleet unable to be flexible to changes in demand can incur high costs. For example, if a company's fleet is too small, it may not be able to meet customer demand, resulting in lost business. Alternatively, if a company's fleet is too large, it may have unused capacity, resulting in wasted resources and higher fleet costs.

Fleet elasticity aims to find the sweet spot where fleet size meets customer demand without incurring excess costs. A flexible fleet allows you to examine your current operations and eliminate unnecessary expenses.

Reduce the Costs of Vehicle Purchasing, Maintenance, and Insurance

An elastic fleet reduces the cost of serving your customers. As your busy season approaches or if you want to expand your market reach, you won't need to purchase more trucks. Instead, you'll be able to right-size your fleet and save on fleet insurance and maintenance.

With fleet elasticity, you can avoid these high costs by outsourcing vehicles to quickly meet demand spikes while you maintain a cost-effective in-house fleet size.

When you outsource vehicles and drivers, you also reduce the liability risks associated with delivery. The logistics provider supplying the elastic fleet takes on the liability of the delivery and provides you with cargo insurance so you have the peace of mind your merchandise and company are protected from the pickup to the drop-off.  

Reduce the Costs of Hiring, Payroll, and Insuring Drivers

Companies spend a great deal of time and money hiring, training, paying, and ensuring delivery drivers. However, when demand fluctuates, it's easy to become oversaturated with drivers that sit on the sidelines of your payroll while you wait for the next spike in demand to hit.

An elastic fleet ensures you always maintain the right amount of drivers to operate efficiently. Employing, paying, and insuring drivers full-time is very costly. Outsourcing insured drivers with an elastic fleet as needed solves this problem.

Flex Your Fleet Up or Down to Match Market Conditions

Never lose an order again due to fleet constraints. Instead, easily match your fleet size to market conditions by leveraging fleet elasticity. For example, if demand for your product or service decreases, you can quickly change your fleet size downward to match the new demand. This helps avoid the costs of excess capacity and unused vehicles.

On the other hand, if demand for your product or service increases, you can rapidly adjust your fleet size upward to match the new demand. This helps ensure that you have the capacity to meet customer demand and avoid lost business.

An elastic fleet can be scaled up or down to correspond to the market's needs. You can ensure your operations run parallel to market demands.

Scale New Businesses and Territories More Efficiently

With a flexible fleet, you can expand new businesses and territories more efficiently.

When a company expands into a new territory, it may not be sure how much demand there will be for its product or service.

If the company purchases too many vehicles, it may have idle capacity and incur unnecessary costs. If the company buys too few vehicles, it may not be able to meet customer demand and lose business.

Fleet elasticity can help you avoid these problems by adjusting the fleet size effortlessly. This ensures you always have an efficient number of vehicles to meet customer demand without incurring excess costs of purchasing more vehicles as you plan to expand your reach.

Optimize Your Flexible Fleet with Curri

Curri can improve your operations with our enterprise-grade logistics platform. With access to our 2M+ nationwide carrier network, you can handle spikes in demand or degradation in your fleet like a pro.

Our elastic fleet has everything you need, from sedans to semi-trucks, and equips you with insured drivers nationwide. We make it easy for you to harness the power of a flexible fleet to increase sales, minimize your operational costs, and improve your customer experience.

By utilizing Curri, our customers have saved over 30% on operating expenses, such as fleet insurance and maintenance, and improved their delivery experience to increase customer retention by 25%.

It takes less than a minute to book a delivery on our logistics platform. Your sales leaders will effortlessly grow revenue by always being able to say "Yes!" to customer demands and time constraints. Our clients have converted 24% more sales by offering on-demand delivery with Curri.

Our customers also decrease their exposure to risk and liability with our cargo insurance and safety compliance. All Curri deliveries are insured up to $25,000, with additional coverage available up to $250,000 or more.

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