--- title: "Distributors: Have You Noticed the Profits Slipping Away from Your Delivery Trucks?" description: "A distributor named Mr. Zhou calculated his logistics costs: fuel, driver salary, maintenance, and insurance for one truck total about 10,000 yuan per month. To save on logistics, he suggests reducing vehicle wear and depreciation, optimizing delivery routes, and balancing product weight and profit to ensure high truck load rates." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-08-28" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-have-you-noticed-the-profits-slipping-away-from-your-delive-9754c14b/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-have-you-noticed-the-profits-slipping-away-from-your-delive-9754c14b.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CwV4sbpzvUDRi5dONbseeA" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86-%E9%85%8D%E9%80%81%E8%BD%A6%E4%B8%8A%E6%BA%9C%E8%B5%B0%E7%9A%84%E5%88%A9%E6%B6%A6-%E4%BD%A0%E6%B3%A8%E6%84%8F%E5%88%B0%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89-9754c14b.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-have-you-noticed-the-profits-slipping-away-from-your-delive-9754c14b/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Distributors: Have You Noticed the Profits Slipping Away from Your Delivery Trucks? > A distributor named Mr. Zhou calculated his logistics costs: fuel, driver salary, maintenance, and insurance for one truck total about 10,000 yuan per month. To save on logistics, he suggests reducing vehicle wear and depreciation, optimizing delivery routes, and balancing product weight and profit to ensure high truck load rates. **Friendly Reminder: Click the blue text above “FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management.** **Looking at Delivery Costs from One Truck** Mr. Zhou calculated his logistics costs: based on a maximum delivery radius of 40 kilometers per truck, monthly fuel costs reach 2,500 yuan; with one driver per truck, the monthly salary is 3,500 yuan; maintenance and repair costs run 600 to 800 yuan per month; and annual insurance for each truck is at least 5,000 yuan. Adding these major items, fixed monthly expenses are about 7,500 yuan, plus various other costs, bringing the total monthly expenditure per truck to roughly 10,000 yuan. Given that his company's distribution network mainly covers several large supermarkets in the city and numerous small and medium outlets, Mr. Zhou integrated vehicle and personnel management by implementing a customer manager system. Following the principle of one person and one truck responsible for one area, he assigned 11 trucks to 11 area managers, who are fully responsible for vehicle allocation and end-customer visits. Under this allocation model, within a service radius of 40 kilometers, a truck typically makes one delivery trip per day. To cover costs, the truck's load rate must not fall below 60% (assuming no vehicle issues). If a truck delivers only half a load, that trip yields zero profit or even a loss. During peak sales seasons, a truck can make up to two trips, with load rates generally exceeding 80%. To encourage more deliveries during peak times, Mr. Zhou also provides appropriate subsidies to drivers who make extra trips. **Saving Profits from the Truck** To reduce logistics costs, certain fixed costs cannot be cut, such as driver wages, fuel, and insurance, which even increase year by year. Without a decent base salary, it's hard to retain delivery staff. Currently, courier delivery personnel at express companies earn around 5,000 yuan, creating an implicit comparison. As for insurance, Mr. Zhou believes comprehensive vehicle insurance is essential. So, how can distributors save on logistics costs? First, minimize vehicle wear and depreciation. This can be achieved by ensuring vehicle stability. Mr. Zhou's company generally does not frequently swap vehicles or drivers, because each driver has an attachment to their usual vehicle and knows its performance, which avoids unnecessary wear from driver-vehicle adjustment. Additionally, when acquiring vehicles, Mr. Zhou typically chooses used vehicles with about 5 years of service life, avoiding disputes over vehicle selection. Second, plan delivery routes to avoid blind spots and detours. Mr. Zhou has clear requirements for customer managers: each truck covers about 200 outlets within its delivery area. A customer manager can handle the triple role of driver, delivery person, and terminal maintenance staff. A truck can serve 10 to 12 terminal outlets per day, and most outlets accept a visit frequency of once every two weeks. Of course, the prerequisite is that each outlet's inventory does not exceed 45 days, which the customer manager must monitor. Finally, when it comes to product mix for delivery, consider both weight and profit to ensure a high load rate. A high load rate does not necessarily mean high profit, but if the load rate is low, the distributor's profit is certainly low. Therefore, Mr. Zhou believes that most snack foods and convenience foods are light in weight but bulky in volume. If paired with some small, heavy products, delivery efficiency can be improved, while also considering overall sales profit to achieve twice the result with half the effort. --- **Like this article? Feel free to share it to your Moments by clicking the top right corner.** About us: WeChat ID: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting and Management Account intro: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally addressing distributor internal issues. Click the “Read Original” link below to enter our micro-community for interactive exchange and questions. Learning and exchange QQ group: 344257092 Reply 1 to enter the micro-official website to view historical messages. --- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. 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