Food truck fleets can cut the cost of carbon tax

1 June, 2011

The Australian food industry has a genuine concern that a carbon tax will have a financial impact on every aspect of their businesses, increasing costs on each component.

This means tyres will not escape the net. A carbon tax is likely to increase the cost of running a fleet of trucks, buses and vans due to the exhaust emissions of the vehicles, particularly those that are refrigerated.
Increased costs will be felt even more considering the rubber industry seems destined to be controlled from a single, huge plant in Singapore in the coming years.
With many food companies operating large fleets, tyre management will step in as the necessary course of action to maintain affordability in case of any carbon tax.
Expert in the field of tyre management, Mr Brad Bearman of Bear’s Tyres, says it shouldn’t have taken the weight of a proposed carbon tax to make operators more aware of how tyres can be turned into a profit generator rather than a loss-maker.
“An unfortunate habit has developed around the humble fleet tyre, and that is that almost right across the board they are widely considered as a consumable rather than an asset,” said Mr Bearman.
“For some time now, Australia has had at its disposal a simple, accurate means to manage and cost quantify the entire lifecycle of each and every tyre, but oddly it has mostly been thrown into the too-hard basket.
“But now with the harrowing spectre of a carbon tax proposed for Australian industry, there has been a complete 180-degree turn by truck companies, bus operators, van fleets and other business dependent on vehicles.
“They now know the imperative nature of extracting every single kilometre, every single day of performance from each and every tyre, to keep their tyre costs in check if the carbon tax should come.”
Brad Bearman developed a world first to aid fleet managers; the Bear’s Tyre Tracker, which provides a complete transparency, disclosing all running costs over the entire lifecycle of each and every tyre.
It turns fleet tyres into a capital asset rather than a costly consumable, giving control of this asset to managers and owners rather than drivers.
Bear’s Tyre Tracker consolidates all operations and depots under the one umbrella, providing extensive data for the hands-on side of tyre choice and maintenance as well as the white collar end, suiting accountants and planners too.
Too many tyres are being retired too early or are wasted far too quickly, meaning money is squandered. With Bear’s Tyre Tracker, this will never happen again as guesswork is taken out of the equation.
“Make no mistake, this federal government is to some extent influenced by smaller or fringe political parties and independents and appears to be strongly advocating a carbon tax against the wishes of Australia’s industrial companies,” said Mr Bearman.
“Transporters are viewed as being mildly pollutive – particularly with exhaust emissions, so it will pay to stay ahead of the game and maximise returns from the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tyres used by a single fleet each year.
“From my experience”, says Mr. Bearman, “most logistics companies have little or no idea how to properly maintain their truck tyres. In fact, I have seen examples where tyres, with 30-50 percent of rubber left on them are just tossed out into the garbage”.
“Not only can nearly every company in Australia that buys and uses tyres save significant amounts of money, they can, at the same time, save the environment as well and maintain margins in an economy that soon may have a carbon tax. It’s a win-win situation as far as I am concerned”, says Mr. Bearman.
For most of his clients, Brad Bearman finds that his tyre tracker can save up to 25-50 per cent on tyre changing costs and will bring down the cost per kilometer (CpK) down to very low levels– all while doing your bit for the environment at the same time.

Image courtesy of http://econews.com.au

[Food Mag]