Collaborating to improve transport logistics
The UK’s leading freight carrier collaboration service, Transport Exchange Group, (TEG) and FORS, the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme, will work together to offer their range of products and services to their respective members to help improve collaboration levels in the transport sector.
The initiative will combine the considerable risk reduction, safety and quality advantages of FORS with the profitability and business agility results of TEG, the UK’s busiest freight exchanges, Courier Exchange and Haulage Exchange.
In the last 12 months, TEG members have been able to cut CO2 emissions by more than 9,000 tonnes thanks to reduced empty running. At the same time, members carried in excess of £100m of extra paid work. Similarly FORS has helped dramatically improve road safety and reduce the wider environmental and traffic impacts of freight and fleet operations.
By working together, third party logistics companies with FORS membership can significantly reduce their empty running by around 60%, extend their real-time capacity networks and get lower cost access to TEG services, such as Haulage Exchange, Courier Exchange and CX Euro. They will also get the Exchanges’ multi-vendor telematics integration as standard.
Climate change research
In separate news, TRL will help European road operators address climate change with the launch of a €450,000 research project.
TRL is leading a consortium of six partners to deliver the two year DeTECToR (Decision-support Tools for Embedding Climate Change Thinking on Roads) project. The project is part of CEDR’s Transnational Road Research Programme, Call 2015 Climate Change: From Desk to Road and is funded by Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Austria.
DeTECToR will produce practical tools and guidance documents, enabling road operators to better integrate climate change considerations in decision making and procurement. These include a cost-benefit tool that will utilise climate projections and asset information to enable the assessment of the cost-effectiveness of different adaptation actions.
According to a recent report from the European Commission on the impact of climate change on transport, weather stresses currently represent 30-50% of road maintenance costs in Europe – between €8 and €13 billion every year.
