Private Fleet Management/Pepsi: The joy of high service

By John D. Schulz, contributing editor -- Logistics Management, 4/1/2008

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Pepsi: The joy of high service

Some private fleets operate to obtain service that otherwise wouldn’t be available from for-hire fleets. However, seasoned private fleet veterans emphasize that private carriage may not be for everyone. There has to be tangible, demonstrable reasons for operating a private fleet. Usually, these requirements are service-related, although there can be other valid reasons as well.

For Brian Casey, national transportation operations manager for Pepsi Bottling Group (Somers, N.Y.), it’s pretty clear: It’s all about the service. According to Casey, the sheer size of Pepsi’s private fleet, the fourth-largest private fleet in the U.S., is what gives his team a considerable advantage against his stiff competition. Casey oversees a fleet of 5,937 tractors, 2,544 straight trucks, and 8,800 trailers. That gives Pepsi an ability to have trucks rolling 24 hours a day, delivering product and raw materials in both remote and congested locations without having to worry about capacity requirements that would be necessary with for-hire carriage.

“As an organization, our mission is simple: we sell soda. Everything we do supports that mission,” says Casey, “Our business is not complex. But the complexity lies in volume and how many times we go to a location. It’s not uncommon for our trucks to go to warehouse 15 to 20 times a day,” he says.

That kind of service requirement would be very difficult to obtain at reasonable cost from for-hire carriers. Its private fleet, Casey says, allows Pepsi to better spread those deliveries across the 24-hour spectrum. “We found that difficult with a common carrier,” he says. “This allows us to better control flow in and out of 350 satellite warehouses and 52 manufacturing plants.”

In helping Pepsi win in the ultra-competitive soda wars, Casey says Pepsi’s current overall configuration of manufacturing plants and warehouses could not exist without its private fleet. It’s the “glue” that binds the entire operation together, giving the company a competitive advantage in an industry sector that measures speed of delivery to stores in minutes and hours, not days or weeks.

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