Food Shippers Benefit from Leasing
How leasing can help food and beverage shippers control costs, increase uptime and improve compliance
IMPROVE COMPLIANCE
Food Shippers Benefit from Leasing
The business world is full of unknowns, but there are several ways leasing can help you minimize transportation-related risks so you can focus on your core competencies.
At Penske Truck Leasing, we provide a range of services designed to help you solve delivery challenges unique to the food and beverage industry. From pickup through delivery, we can help you spec the right vehicles and maintain them throughout the life of the lease. Here are a few ways a full-service lease helps you minimize risk.
Control Costs
Leasing provides a lower upfront capital investment and predictable monthly payments, which ensures there are no surprises that negatively impact your budget. Because financing costs are established in advance, there is no concern on what costs will be long-term.
Along with greater predictability, leasing provides increased visibility into overall life cycle cost, allowing you to make more informed decisions regarding your future equipment needs. Leasing also frees up capital for use in a company's core business.
Improve Safety
As part of our overall transportation solution, we provide a comprehensive maintenance approach throughout the term of the lease. A rigorous preventive maintenance program ensures that the equipment is reliable and doing the job it is intended to perform, from the vehicle's in-service date until the end of the lease. That, in turn, helps you attract qualified drivers, promotes your brand, increases customer satisfaction and improves safety.
Safety also protects your brand, reduces reputational risk and can limit liability. If you don't have a full-service maintenance operation covering your equipment, you're exposing yourself to potential litigation liabilities. When you have a reputable third-party provider maintaining the equipment and documenting every repair, you have something of substance to fall back on.
To ensure your entire fleet is optimized and running safely and efficiently, we offer comprehensive maintenance programs for customer-owned vehicles. And with refrigeration units on trailers also playing a critical role in keeping products, we service and maintain them as well, ensuring your food arrives as intended.
Increase Uptime
If today's high-tech vehicles are not properly maintained, you run a higher risk of vehicle breakdowns, incidents or accidents. At a minimum, improper maintenance can result in missed customer deliveries and may tarnish your reputation. If left uncorrected, the consequences can be significant, including reductions in customer loyalty and associated economic drains on cash flow and growth revenue.
In reality, even the best-maintained vehicle may need service or repair while on the road. Through our dedicated, company-owned 24/7 roadside assistance group, we provide hands-on experts to communicate with your driver as well as update your management team throughout the process until your driver and equipment are rolling again.
In instances where the vehicle is temporarily inoperable, we provide a comparable substitute vehicle from our fleet of late-model units to minimize any disruptions to service. If a replacement vehicle is necessary, the speed of delivery is crucial, and we get you back on the road fast.
Protect CSA Scores
Nearly two million roadside commercial motor vehicle inspections were conducted last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reported. A well-maintained vehicle minimizes the risk of a violation at a roadside inspection, which helps you maintain your scores as part of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program that calculates fleets' safety ratings and determines which fleets warrant intervention.
Violations Can Cost You
In January 2021, the U.S. Department of Transportation added an inflation adjustment to civil penalty fines charged to commercial vehicle operators who violate transportation industry regulations. Penalties range from $334 to $194,691 with a median fine of $11,125.
Here are some important numbers to know from 2021:
| 1,784,479 | 2,707,891 | 571,810 |
| Total number of vehicle inspections | Total number of vehicle violations | Total number of vehicle OOS violations |
Source: FMCSA, Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS), data snapshot as of January 2, 2022, for the 2021 calendar year
Not only is an intervention time consuming and potentially costly, a portion of CSA data is public and can be viewed by customers, shippers and potential employees.
CSA scores are becoming more important to drivers as inspections now follow drivers for three years as part of the FMCSA's PreEmployment Screening Program. While a number of violations ultimately come down to the driver's responsibility, some are dependent on the carriers and private fleet operators, which is making some drivers more selective about who they will work for. Private fleet operators with the best maintenance ratings are more likely to attract qualified drivers while simultaneously improving their CSA scores.
Obtain the Correct Equipment
To optimize operations and efficiency, it is important to spec the right vehicle for the application.
We will sit down with you to examine historical data and understand routes, capacity, drivers and freight, ensuring everything is covered. With the facts in hand, we work with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to build vehicles for optimal performance and fuel efficiency that meet your exact needs. We have the experience and expertise in multiple industries to find the right equipment for the job.
Full-service leasing also provides flexibility in the number of vehicles you keep. Whether it's new customers and unexpected growth, or just your busy season, you can easily and cost-effectively supplement your fleet with our rental trucks. Our lease and contract maintenance customers enjoy discounted rates on Penske truck rentals.
Plus, we proactively support you when you experience changes in your operations or increased customer demand.
Stay Compliant
We also monitor regulations, which helps ensure the equipment you are running is in compliance with state and federal regulations.
Additionally, Penske can help you stay compliant with the requirements of the food safety modernization act (FSMA). According to the act, the design of vehicles and equipment used in transportation operations and the materials used in their manufacture and their workmanship must be “suitable.” Equipment must be “adequately cleanable” to allow the sanitary transport of food. In addition, the rule specifies, “vehicles and transportation equipment must be stored in a manner that prevents harborage of pests or becoming contaminated in any other manner that could result in food becoming adulterated. For food requiring specific temperatures, vehicles and transportation equipment must be equipped, as necessary, to provide adequate temperature control. The FSMA requires shippers and carriers to agree to procedures for monitoring temperatures within the trailer or truck body, when applicable. Penske has extensive expertise in these areas.
Focus on your Core Competency
If your business is like many others, transportation is not your core focus. Utilizing a lease helps you minimize the amount of time you spend managing and monitoring the transportation side of the business. Let us do what we do best: take care of your fleet.
Penske has a team of experts ready to help you find the best solutions for your needs, including commercial rental trucks, truck leases, fleet maintenance, logistics services and used trucks.
July 2016 / Updated January 2022
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FOOD AND BEVERAGE KNOWLEDGE CENTER
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