The Real Cost Of Traffic Congestion

January 29, 2019 | by Marketing Team

Traffic Congestion in Trucking | Thunder Funding

In a previous blog, we mentioned that traffic congestion cost the trucking industry a whopping $74.5 billion in additional operating costs and 1.2 billion hours in driver delays in 2016. This is an unfortunate trend that we don’t foresee going away anytime soon.Not surprisingly, 91 percent of all slowdowns take place in metropolitan areas. So, what can you do to minimize the impact of traffic congestion on your bottom line?

Altering Operations

In an effort to avoid congested highways and metropolitan areas, some companies have moved outside of bustling urban centers. While this doesn’t eliminate the fact that many deliveries still need to be made within cities, it does help cut down on at least some of the time (and money) spent idling and driving through traffic. We also recommend evaluating whether or not it would be beneficial to adjust operating hours to avoid peak morning and evening traffic wherever possible. For many companies, this isn’t an option at all. Some trucking companies are also working towards consolidating their freight into as few shipments as possible to minimize the number of their trucks on the road that have to deal with traffic.

Improved Route Planning

Route optimization software could be an option in helping fleets and their drivers avoid traffic congestion and bottlenecks. A balance essentially needs to be struck between eliminating miles from the route and the amount of time your drivers will lose sitting in a bottleneck. Based on the $74.5 billion in traffic congestion costs in 2016, eliminating just 10 percent of that time lost to congestion would produce over $7 billion in economic savings. Yes, please.

What are you doing to minimize the impact of traffic congestion on your bottom line?

For more information about trends in trucking be sure to check out this blog post: Key Trucking Industry Issues  To Follow Us Into 2021

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