Load building plays an important role in freight transportation, increasing truck fill rates and loading sequences, helping freight and shipping companies to stay competitive despite the continuously increasing transportation rates.
With new technologies, such as 3D truck load building software, load planning has become easier than you might think. In this article, we will discuss the challenges of manual load planning as well as strategies and technologies to cope with these challenges caused by inefficient load building.
What is truck load building?
Load building is the process of creating the most efficient and effective way to load your freight onto vehicles, typically trucks and vans. By carefully planning the placement of your freight, you can minimize wasted space and improve safety. Load building is an important part of making the most of your freight transportation.
The aim of optimized load building is to reduce the number of necessary vehicles required for order delivery, which improves efficiency. When done correctly, it can save you time and money. Done incorrectly, it can lead to costly delays and accidents.
The Challenges of Truck Load Building
Truck load building is the process of efficiently arranging and loading goods onto trucks for transportation.
Truck load building has its share of challenges in the logistics and supply chain industry. One major issue is achieving high fill-rates in vehicles by finding the perfect fit of boxes and pallets within trucks.
It's like a balancing act, trying not to overload the truck, which can lead to fines and unnecessary risks, or underload it, which raises transportation costs.
Another challenge is dealing with lots of different types of item types, each with its own size and handling needs. It can get tricky to arrange everything efficiently in the limited space of a truck, especially when you have to consider the loading sequence - the first item loaded in has to be the last one to come off.
Plus, unexpected changes or delays can mess up these plans.
Benefits of truck load building?
1) Capacity planning
Capacity planning is done before loading any goods on pallets or trucks. Load planners need to calculate the number of loading meters per order, as this is crucial input for route planning. These calculations must be correct, otherwise, the trucks might be less than a truckload or some orders won’t be able to fit in the truck.
With the assistance of truck load building software:
- Reduce transport costs by finding the optimal load plan:
- minimize the number of vehicles used
- find the right vehicle types for your orders
- increase the fill rate of your available space
- feed route optimization with the right data
- understand the necessary amount of loading meters for an order
Avoid having to pay for a partial shipment (which can be more expensive) due to the limited amount of loading meters you have or receiving a less-than-full load (which wastes space and money).
If you book too much freight, you’ll end up paying for loading meters that you're not using. On the other hand, if you book too little freight, you'll pay even more.
2) Assistance during loading operations, with 3D visualizations
Capacity planning and order sequencing onto trucks is an interlinked challenge.
You should plan delivery routes at the same time that you determine which trucks to fill and how.
With the assistance of 3D truck load planning algorithms, you can ensure the optimal fill-rate while taking into account that the first order loaded in the truck should be the last one off the truck.1
This means that you can be confident that you're always getting the most efficient routes, with the minimum amount of operational overhead.
Implementation of this solution also comes with 3D load planning visualization where you are able to see how the truck load looks in real-time as well as the type of cargo you have loaded.
With the 3D load planning solution, you don’t need to think about cargo requirements and vehicle characteristics, or how you're going to group destinations together, all while dealing with re-planning due to disruptions and emergencies.
Be sure that you're getting the most efficient routes which consider driver workloads and overtime.
3) Weight load distribution
The axle weight limit is the maximum weight that can be distributed across the truck axles. The distribution of weight across the truck's wheels and axles must be even so it matches what is supported by your chassis manufacturer. This way you avoid having something move during transit and prevent premature wear & tear on vehicle parts such as the brakes.
Proper weight distribution in trucks is crucial and exceeding these limits can lead to financial penalties which differ from country to country and measurement error tolerances, with some penalties going as high as 75'000 euros.2
Exceeding these limits can also lead to even more devastating consequences such as damaged trucks, cargo, or even drivers if an accident occurs.
When using 3D truck load building software, planned load building is made faster and easier, ensuring that your trailer is properly loaded making sure axle weight limits are followed, thus improving the safety of the cargo and eliminating the risk of fines.
Conclusions
With short computing times, freight and shipping companies can implement last-minute changes with ease and produce high-quality solutions using a 3D Load building solution.
The load planners will be left in the capable hands of the 3D truck loading software, managing operations with clear instructions in daily operations, assisting during loading operations, and making sure that the weight of the cargo is optimally distributed throughout the vehicle.
Sources:
[1] Optimoroute. Load Planning: How Load Planers Can Use Route Optimization to Reduce Transportation Costs, 2022. From: https://optimoroute.com/load-planning/
[2] AVBS. Heavy fines possible. From: https://www.avbs.be/kenniscentrum/onderwerpen/zware-boetes-mogelijk