Evaluating Delivery Operations of Wholesale Food Distributors

Charles Crossed and Martin Kriesberg

No 312096, Marketing Research Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Transportation and Marketing Program

Abstract: Excerpts from the report: Delivery costs are 20 to 25 percent of the total expenses of wholesale food distributors; therefore, savings in this function can affect overall food distribution costs. Controlling delivery costs has been difficult because there have been no standards of performance for delivery drivers and no generally accepted standards for comparison among wholesale grocers. Since delivery operations are not closely supervised, other measures for control are needed. This report describes a procedure for evaluating the performance of drivers; it tells how the procedure was developed, and how it may be used by distributors to improve the efficiency of their delivery operation. The study on which this report is based is part of a broad program of research designed to reduce costs of marketing agricultural commodities. The procedure in this report enables wholesale food distributors to evaluate the performance of individual drivers over most routes. It also permits an evaluation of a firm's overall delivery operation against normal delivery time, and, hence, facilitates comparison between firms. The normal or standard, as used here, is the performance that a conscientious driver, working with average skill and at an average pace, can attain.

Keywords: Labor and Human Capital; Marketing; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46
Date: 1961-10
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uamsmr:312096

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.312096

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