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£7.00 a gallon x 5 = £35 in a truck @ 20 miles / gallon average (without a trailer), doing only 20 miles a day
plus mower petrol , and 2 stroke oils ; £35.00 a week minimum before you start adding up any other fized overheads or variable overheads -
One approach we are trying which has proved popular is to go to a "4 day" working week with longer hours on those 4 days;
ie normal working week:
- std working day 8 hrs, 5 days a week = 40 hrs
4 day week approach:
- std working day 10 hrs, 4 days a week = 40 hrs
So, what's gained by this approach ?
1 days less travelling / fuel cost per team/vehicle (multiply by multiple teams could mean substantial saving)
Same working effort
Ability to complete more in a day - especially in grounds maintenance
'Spare' day for high value 'emergency jobs' or to use a contingency - possibly as overtime.
Likely to travel more 'outside' rush hours
and finally, but importantly a 3 day weekend - which is key point for staff
Issues ?
- getting staff buy-in (but 3 day weekend is very appealing.....)
- ensure productivity remains constant and guys don't go off boil for last 2 hours
- difficult to use for hard labour / landscaping type jobs (tiredness/weather etc ?)
Just an idea and something we are trying.
Interesting Gary.
We did something similar (not travel related) many years ago when there was a heatwave. We started earlier for all five days and finished half day on Friday.
Is there a temptation to work on the day that is now free if a job came in?
I've started this as a trial for 1 team since the clocks went back in March and they start at 7am, which means they get to business parks early on a rota and address issues (car park hedges, tree works etc) that would otherwise mean a return visit and/or Saturday morning working (and hence more 'expense' to us...).
They will revert to a normal working week once the clocks go back in October.
Being commercial based, the client 'dictates' the visit frequency, we 'dictate' the schedule so we can batch our sites to suit.....
More generally on sales costs.
It was not something I had considered until relatively recently, surprising since I have been a in business for a long while. In terms of time costs, the mere act of obtaining work, producing brochures, site visits, preparing quotes discussing work with customers, can be considerable, this is an addition to postage and phone costs, the total can be surprising.
My son a production engineer, thinks that these processes should be viewed as a production issue, I have thought on these lines for sometime but hadn't articulated it in this way. I try now to avoid speculative site visits, I try to get details up front, to give an idea of cost to a customer, only following up with a site visit if they are prepared to spend the amount of money that the job may involve.