Doing more with less: last mile fleet solutions.

Nathan Forster, Head of Automotive and Transportation Marketing

Autonomy and teleoperations are helping fleet and logistics operators address the labor shortage by performing more work with fewer resources.

Labor constraints, high employee turnover, and a predicted shortage of 64,000 truck drivers this year,¹ are all pushing transportation and logistics (T&L) organizations to rethink the “last mile” of the supply chain.

The final step of the delivery process—where shipments are moved from a distribution hub to their final destination—the last mile—is both resource and time-intensive. In fact, this single leg can account for up to 53% of overall shipping costs.² Fuel, delivery location, manpower, and failure to deliver the goods can all add up quickly in the last mile.

Forward-thinking T&L operators are already leveraging autonomy and teleoperations in their organizations—full autonomy isn’t required to start seeing significant benefits.

Autonomy today comes in two forms: autonomous vehicles that sense their environments and operate without human involvement, and teleoperations that rely on an autonomous vehicle operator or “teleoperator” working from a remote location and using a wireless network to control the vehicle.

Both technologies are already in use in the commercial environment and continue to expand steadily for these core reasons:

• They’re using cargo payload, rather than humans, which reduces the potential safety hazards.
• They operate at slow speeds, generally below 12 miles per hour.
• They use teleoperations for remote piloting, which means the human involvement happens from afar (versus in the vehicle itself).

Autonomy isn’t tied to the road, either. In fact, we’re seeing more companies experimenting with drones to bridge last-mile gaps. For example, Walmart is partnering with DroneUp to create a last-mile delivery network that’s expected to be able to deliver one million packages annually.

Drones are also environmentally friendly. Their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are typically lower than those of electric cars and vans completing individual, last-mile deliveries, and significantly lower than those of gasoline-powered vehicles.

More T&L companies are turning to autonomy and teleoperations to get more done with fewer people, but also to better meet their customers’ expectations and keep those clients coming back.

Working with T-Mobile for Business, organizations can tap into our experience and wealth of driverless technology partnerships, autonomous fleet management, and cargo-as-a-service opportunities. And we provide the connectivity that organizations need to keep the last mile of the supply chain optimized, productive, and cost-effective. For more information about how T-Mobile for Business is transforming how fleets operate, check out our fleet management solutions page.