Mini-hubs slash costs

Double deck distribution means minihubs make sense for high volume customers such as Boots who serve urban areas with numerous stores

Transdek has been working on the exciting development of mini-hubs more than most. The firm manufactures warehouse-side lifts for unloading double deck trailers and has worked on mini-hubs with Boots. It is convinced the concept can offer considerable benefits to retailers and other firms distributing goods country-wide.

Mini-hubs are small facilities located close to urban areas serving a number of stores. The company can use double deck distribution - with its associated fuel and carbon savings - to transport goods to the cross docking mini-hub and lighter vehicles, including electric, distribute the last leg to the store.

Transdek managing director Mark Adams says: "Companies like Boots have recognised the value of mini-hubs hugely. Up until a few years ago they had very large hubs and sent raw products to them for picking and delivery to store.

"What they have now done is reduce those warehouses to smaller units, effectively using cross docking. Products are now picked centrally and are identified all they way through, eliminating a huge amount of double handling. Savings are phenomenal." capacity fixed models have." Adams believes Tesco's strategy of focusing on fixed double deck trailers is correct. These trailers have greater capacity because heavy lifting gear is in the warehouse not the truck. The trailers are less expensive, although users of fixed trailers do have to invest in lifting gear in the warehouse, whereas power double deck trailers can be unloaded at warehouses not equipped with lifts.

Adams continues: "Powered double deck equipment can only be used for limited applications, Tesco needed to transport greater weight, so needed fixed deck. It is by far the most efficient way but it needs docking stations at either end." With Transdek standing to gain from greater uptake of fixed deck trailers, the manufacturer hopes the likes of Tesco can push the concept out across its network and beyond to suppliers and eventually across Europe.

With Tesco among the drivers, Adams predicts dramatic increases in the use of fixed double deck distribution in the next two or three years and is confident his company has the capacity to keep pace with growth.

Indeed Europe is a largely untapped market at present, with double decking less prevalent than in the UK. Consider the number of suppliers trunking goods from Europe to the UK to serve supermarkets.Most of this is carried on single deck trailers.

As suppliers look to secure contracts with the likes of Tesco synching with its double deck infrastructure will make sense.

Transdek is confident it has the right technology to take advantage of any such shift. For example, the company says scissor lifts have difficulty unloading European trailers, which have lower floor height. The Trandsdek system can load to floor level and is designed on a rope pulley system.

Indeed, Transdek can enable double deck lifting on a flat floor.

It has also been able to install big lifts without any piling or civil engineering work required.

Following design and manufacture, Transdek preassembles all lifts at its north Nottinghamshire factory (UK manufacturers produce separate units under license, and the Transdek plant does final assembly and testing), and then arrives on site. A team removes the existing dock shelter (which is left on site should the customer wish to move the lift).Within two hours the trucks and cranes are gone, and a three-man team (two on a smaller lift) has the lift fully configured by the following morning. "The people at Boots and Tesco's didn't believe we could do it so swiftly," says Adams. "But we did." It was a Boots installation that saw Transdek win a Motor Transport award last year.

According to Adams, the firm was previously running 12 trunks a day from Greenwich. By switching to double deck, it now only needs to run seven. Boots had 220 double deckers on the road by the end of 2009, and while it did not allow precise numbers to be printed, the savings were in seven figures.