Own truck or bought-in freight: the decision most manufacturers make by habit

At a component manufacturer with two trucks of its own, the rule is simple. If it fits on our truck, it goes on our truck. Everything else is booked with the carrier. The rule is older than most of the people applying it, and nobody has priced it since it was made.

It was a reasonable rule when it was written. The trouble is that it answers a question about capacity, and the question that matters is about cost.

The truck in the yard is not free

A truck costs money on days it does not move: the driver, the lease or depreciation, insurance, tax. It costs more for every kilometre it does: fuel, tyres, tolls, maintenance. Take invented but plausible figures of SEK 5,200 a day and SEK 9 a kilometre.

On a 240-kilometre round with six drops, the day costs SEK 7,360, or about SEK 1,230 a drop. Send the same truck the same distance with one urgent pallet and that pallet has cost SEK 7,360. A carrier would have moved it for a fraction of that.

The usual reply is that the truck is paid for anyway. That is true only when the truck would otherwise stand still. Once it is the reason a full round went out a day late, the urgent pallet has cost more than its own journey.

Where the own truck earns its place

• Dense, regular rounds. Many drops, short distances between them, the same customers each week.
• Deliveries that carry more than goods. A driver who knows the customer’s goods-in, who brings back the empty stillages, who can be trusted with a line-side delivery at six in the morning.
• A loaded return leg. Collecting material from a supplier on the way home changes the arithmetic of the whole day.

Where the carrier is the better answer

• Single pallets a long way off. The carrier’s network shares the distance among many consignors. Your truck cannot.
• Thin or irregular lanes. A destination you serve twice a month never fills a round.
• Peaks. A truck sized for the busiest week is underused in all the others.
• Jobs that break the day. A drop that takes the driver past their hours turns one day into two.
• Goods your vehicle or driver is not equipped for. Dangerous goods, temperature control, a tail-lift you do not have.

The decision belongs to the shipment

None of this is news to a transport planner. What stops it being applied is that the comparison is never in front of anyone at the moment of decision.

The own truck is planned on a whiteboard or in one person’s head. Carrier bookings are made in the carrier’s portal, or in three portals. The ERP knows the order and neither of the others. Comparing “what does this shipment add to today’s round” with “what would the carrier charge” means opening three places and doing arithmetic, so the habit decides.

The useful question is marginal. Given what is already on tomorrow’s round, what does this shipment add in kilometres, minutes and driver’s hours, and is that more or less than the carrier’s rate? It takes seconds to answer when both numbers are on the same screen, and it does not get asked when they are not.

What you lose when you buy the freight

Bought freight is cheaper more often than habit suggests. It also takes something away, and it is better to know what.

With your own truck you know where the goods are and you hold the signed delivery note. With a carrier you have a tracking link in somebody else’s portal and a proof of delivery that arrives when you ask for it. Your customer’s question, “where is it?”, now has two different answers depending on who is driving, and your customer service has to know which.

The second loss is cost per customer. Many manufacturers charge freight as a flat line or include it in the price. Few can say which customers cost more to deliver to than the freight line recovers. That figure needs own-truck cost and carrier cost against the same shipment record.

What this does not decide

• Whether to own a truck at all. That is a decision about the service you promise. A quarter of per-shipment data makes it an informed one.
• Thin lanes stay thin. Choosing well between two options does not create a third.
• Estimates are estimates. Carrier surcharges and an hour’s wait at a goods-in door will still move the real figure.

A quarter’s worth of evidence

List every day your own truck went out last quarter, with its drops and its kilometres. Work out the cost per drop for each day. Then price the same shipments on your carrier’s rate card.

Sort by cost per drop. The top of the list is why you own a truck. The bottom fifth is the work to buy.

Where navichain stands

navichain plans your own fleet and bought-in carriers side by side on the same board. Carrier matching comes with a cost estimate, and distance, fuel and tolls across more than twenty country regimes are costed before the truck moves, so the comparison this article asks for is on one screen. A round that does not fit the driver’s hours, the vehicle class or the delivery window is refused before it is committed.

Carrier bookings go out through the networks you already use, including Opter, LogTrade and Fraktjakt. Whoever carries the goods, the proof of delivery and the consignment note are filed against the shipment, and your customer sees one status in one portal. A REST API and EDI keep your ERP as the system of record where it should be.

A manufacturer does not have to become a haulier to use it. You can start with the transport module alone, it is typically live in days, and there is no implementation fee. The platform page has the detail.