What does a ‘resilient’ middle-mile freight chain look like?

Author: Alistair Lindsay, Chief Operating Officer, Zeus

Keywords: supply chain resilience, road freight, middle mile, sustainable freight

It is almost yesterday's news, but the effects of the pandemic were enormous. 

For the first time in years manufacturers placed materials orders that would just never come. Production shuddered and stopped. Retailers were left with swathes of empty shelves. Consumers started using alternative channels.

Today, we see an industry working at pace to try and ensure this never happens again. Especially in the UK. Resilience is critical in the middle mile.  Supply chain reliability, scalability, speed, and cost control is the goal, but how to achieve them? 

Defining ‘resilience’ in road freight

When Zeus was founded in August 2020, our initial validation studies showed that there was a preponderance of ‘Just-in-Time’ supply chains, all precariously balanced and overly dependent on 5 to 10 manual steps involving Excel spreadsheets, telephone calls, Whatsapp messages, emails and frantic freight managers. 

The pandemic exposed the just-in-time approach and put supply chain resilience under tremendous stress. Just one missing (sick in bed employee) link in the chain is all that it took to disproportionately disrupt a major brand’s entire distribution operation. 

So what breeds freight vulnerability?

1. Lack of transparency, which defines how instantly trackable your deliveries and stock are at any time of the day or night
2. Over reliance on price-driven supplier selection - low cost carriers may be of great value now, but their cannibalised margins means no room for error 
3. Not making the most of new tech and new approaches - such as artificial intelligence and new machine learning tools
4. Over reliance on one particular supplier or distributor: susceptible to diminishing service levels

The fact is: a highly performant mid-mile operation sets solid foundations for a more cost efficient down-stream operation and provides the up-stream planner with the reliability, confidence and control they need to forecast stock and manage supply chains more efficiently. 

Zeus - a best of breed technology + service + ecosystem

Zeus Labs is the first freight platform to offer a technological solution which delivers optimisation of the mid-mile transport operations combined with an open market to instantly resolve any spot loads or ad-hoc requests. Brands such as P&G, Decathlon, AB inBev are already benefiting from our approach.  

Our vision is not just to advance a reliable shipper solution but also to unlock haulier growth by treating them not as one-size-fits-all commoditised assets but as real partners. 

Zeus has already built an ecosystem that provides 50% discounts on premium Apollo truck tyres (that means a massive saving of thousands of pounds a year), access to carbon-neutral diesel, and upcoming developments including access to financing networks to support upgrades to Green HGVs, and much more. 

When a shipper uses Zeus, they are gaining real gains in road freight productivity and reliability, but also importantly helping the ‘small supplier’. These are often overlooked and are fundamental to the continued diversity and thus resilience of Britain’s entire logistics network.

Resilient & adaptable 

The goal of a resilient supply chain is that it both encompasses resistance to crisis but also has a built-in ability to rebound quickly. 

At Tesco, their investment in rail freight helped them navigate the pandemic better than others. However, multimodal systems hold their own unique challenges, such as freight sizes, routing limitations, etc, and are not available solutions to many.

Instead, the main lesson we can all start implementing is that every aspect of our supply chain needs to be revisited, reviewed, and redeveloped. Don’t assume that the way it works now, is the best way it can work. 

As Albert Einstein is quoted as saying ‘assumptions are made, and most assumptions are wrong.’ 

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