inGauge Weekly Benchmarking Update – 06/21/2016

inGauge Weekly Benchmarking Update – 06/21/2016

Population Stats

108 unique Motor Carriers (141 when you include sub-profiles) – 2 new Best Practice Group Members registered in past week, 1 new online subscriber

  • 56 Dry Van (Truckload)
  • 37 Refrigerated (Truckload)
  • 12 Flatbed / Open Deck (Truckload)
  • 2 Specialized (Truckload)
  • 2 LTL

*Attention Flatbed Carriers*

Due to a new Flatbed Best Practice Group forming in the early fall, we expect approximately 11-13 new profiles to be live within the inGauge database within the next couple months. This means we will have stronger database of metrics relevant to flatbed, including specialized/over-dimensional.

Gross Revenue Metrics – Testing

We expect to promote four new gross revenue metrics to the live site by the end of day Friday. These metrics will be:

  • Insurance Expense (% of Gross Revenue)
  • Maintenance Expense (% of Gross Revenue)
  • Revenue per Truck per Week (Gross Revenue)
  • Personnel Expense (% of Gross Revenue)

As you are aware, since launch, we have been expressing all expense metrics as a percentage of net revenue (Linehaul + Accessorial – FSC). We will now be giving you the option to choose (or use both). If you are not a BPG Member, you will need to report your Total, Company Fleet and Owner Operator Fleet Fuel Surcharge Revenue. These line items are #149 (Total), #199 (Company Fleet), and # 248 (OO). Please export your template, with these line items from the export/import area of inGauge.

McLeod Software – McLeod Software Mapping Feature

Over the past three months, McLeod Software has been developing a custom mapping tool that will allow their users to capture and report the specific data points required to utilize both the inGauge Online Benchmarking Service, as well as participate in the Best Practice Groups. This feature will streamline the data collection and reporting process for all benchmarking participants who are McLeod customers. TCA is pleased to announce that this new partnership has officially entered the testing phase.

TCA is inviting Best Practice Group Members and inGauge online subscribers to participate in testing this new feature. To participate, McLeod customers must be on version 11.0 of their respective McLeod software platform. In addition, interested users must be utilizing a fiscal year which follows Calendar months, and have the ‘statistical accounts feature’ enabled.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact Chris Henry, inGauge Program Manager via email ([email protected]) or via phone (1-888-504-6428).

Essential Performance Indicators: The inGauge “Safe OR”

To test a theory about safer fleets being more profitable, we began analyzing the data from all Dryvan and Refrigerated motor carriers within the inGauge database. For each company in the selected group, we sorted each profile based on reported Operating Ratios within the six month period ending February 29, 2016. After segmenting the population into quartiles based on Operating Ratio, we then queried (for each company) the average (six month) results for the following CSA Basic Scores:

  • Unsafe Driving
  • Hours of Service Compliance
  • Vehicle Maintenance

As a result, we are able to report that the average of each CSA Basic score listed above improved as overall quartile profitability grew. Although, you can’t definitively say whether this is either causation or simply correlation, it does highlight an area that will be a interesting area of focus for inGauge as our database grows.

This past Friday, we introduced the “Safe OR”. This new EPI is a combination of a company’s Operating Ratio as well as the sum of the three CSA Basic scores mentioned above. For example, if your Operating Ratio is 94.5%, and the sum of your three selected CSA Basic Scores is “3”, your new “Safe OR” is calculated as 97.5%. Similarly, if your Operating Ratio is 94.5%, and the sum of your three selected CSA Basic Scores is “7”, your new “Safe OR” is calculated as 101.50%. In other words, this measure rewards BOTH profitability and safety.

As an alternative, it was also suggested that we replace the BASIC scores in the above metric with Insurance expense. Using this alternative, for example, if a company has a Operating Ratio of 93.00% and Insurance Expense (% of Revenue) of 3.5%, this alternate “Safe OR” would be 96.5%.

In both examples, you are rewarded for both profitability and strong performance, however the argument for the alternative method is that Insurance expense is largely determined by a third party based on actual claims experience, as opposed to results which can be contaminated due to geography and subjectivity.

We are going to run a similar analysis later this week with the alternate methodology and report the results back next week. If you have any feedback, or suggestions, please email me.

The inGauge Team: On The Road

June 28th – 30th – TCA WorkForce Builders Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana

New Features (Live)

Leading Indicators Dashboard – allows subscribers to utilize a custom dashboard focused on those weekly ‘leading indicators’ that are crucial to short and long term success.
Best Practice Member Dashboard – allows Best Practice Members to display their results visually versus their fellow members – Gauge and Line Charts.
CSA SMS BASIC Data – The Beta version of this feature allows inGauge subscribers to benchmark their performance versus the other 98 (current) inGauge subscribers on these results. To confirm, this data will remain entirely confidential/anonymous.
Gauge Order Preference – Using a new drag and drop feature, available under ‘Profile Management’, primary users can change the order that the gauges are displayed.
New Onboarding/Registration Process – to smooth the initial onboarding and registration process we have introduced a new registration/education process.

New Features (Development Queue)

Formula and Raw Data for each EPI – this new feature will allow users to click on a button, after hovering over a specific gauge. This will open a box which will display the exact formula for each EPI and the raw data used to calculate the results.
Population Filters – Ability to select multiple criteria within each population filter (Due by July 10th)
Population Filters – Fleet size, initial ranges will be 1-99, 100-499, and 500+ trucks (Due by July 10th)
Dashboard Query Optimization – depending on the size of your peer group, inGauge currently processes up to 4700 sub-queries in order to display the dashboard results. Our lead developer is diligently working on optimizing these queries to achieve a goal of 3-4 second load time without any population filters applied. You may notice a 20% improvement in dashboard load time since last week – we continue to look for new ways to speed up this process.
Leading Indicators Dashboard: 1) Web Form input specific to the metrics selected; 2) Line chart attached to each gauge (similar to external dashboard; 3) API data update; and 4) Ability to embed Leading Indicators dashboard on company’s own internal intranet / management software.
BPG Dashboard – Other TC Group average available in filter window to select for inclusion.