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Muller Milk & More delivers daily essentials and local premium products to over 500,000 homes in Britain.

Industry: Food & Beverage

Muller Milk Electric Vehicle

Based in:

United Kingdom

Fleet Size

1200

Fleet Focus

Expandability, Sustainability, Safety

Types of Vehicles:

Vans, Electric Vehicles, Trucks, Trailers

“We thought that a reduction in poor driving incidents just meant that we were safer out there on the road for cyclists and other road users. We hadn’t understood the impact that it was having on our business. If you drive a vehicle smoothly, you save fuel, which is obviously what you hope for. There was no other change in our operation or management at the same time as that trend.”

Marc Ling,
Development Manager, Group Fleet, Muller Milk & More

The Challenge: Vehicle monitoring and driver behaviour analysis

In 2018, Muller Milk & More was seeking a way to better monitor their vehicles. Their main goal was to improve customer service levels and overall driver safety. In particular, they were seeking a solution to remotely monitor vehicles as they drive to and from fulfilment centres.

Muller Milk & More also needed a telematics solution that could show real-time electric vehicle information to help monitor their fleet of EVs. Information such as state of charge (SOC), when a vehicle is charging and when a recharge is necessary were top of mind. They also required insight about vehicle location, delivery status and how their delivery drivers were handling their vehicles on route to the fulfilment centres.

However, tracking the company’s fleet of fully electric Street Scooters and electric vans brought with it several unique operational challenges.

Marc Ling, the Development Manager at Muller Milk & More, is responsible for the Group Fleet division and describes the three main challenges of managing their EV fleet transition as:

  1. Lack of real-world information associated with EV use and, in some cases, discrepancies between manufacturer-stated and actual capabilities for electric vehicles.
  2. Running out of battery power en-route. Marc says, “With an electric vehicle, it’s game over when the battery runs out. So you have to be very, very confident that the electric vehicle is able to do the deliveries that it’s intending to do.”
  3. Confirming that specific customer delivery routes can be serviced as promised with an EV in one charge. This includes the assessment of driving behaviour in a specific range including harsh braking, acceleration, cornering and speeding.


To help combat these issues, Geotab provided customized reporting and other tools for the company to meet its safety and customer service goals.

The Solution: Multi-vehicle type support and reporting

In 2019, Muller Milk & More started to implement Geotab across their fulfilment centre EV fleet, including installations of both the regular Geotab GO device as well as the GO RUGGED on their varying fleet vehicles. The solution enabled them to receive real-time tracking information with particular focus on improving driver behaviour, reducing fuel and energy use and lowering collision rates across its fleet of delivery vehicles.

Customised reports also enabled the Muller Milk & More fulfilment centre managers to expand their weekly driver tool-box talks to include reports on driver behaviour. These talks previously focussed on reducing speeding and seat belt compliance.

Extended EV Range

Following extensive market reviews and EV vehicle testing, Muller Milk & More decided to expand their EV fleet by bringing in an additional 160 vehicles. The selected EV model, the Maxus EV80, can cover up to 120 miles between charges, making it the perfect fit for the longer driver routes.

By the end of 2020, Muller Milk & More had over 500 EVs in use across the UK. These recent EV investments represent the latest step in the businesses wider commitment to reducing its environmental footprint.

Muller Milk & More’s electric fleet travels over 14 million miles per year, which saves them approximately 3.4 million litres of diesel fuel. The switch to EVs has also helped to reduce the noise of its vehicles – an important consideration as all Muller Milk & More deliveries are made before 7 a.m.

Compatibility with multiple ICE and EVs

Another critical success factor in rolling out the Geotab platform across the entire fleet was the support functionality for both EVs and internal combustion engines (ICEs). Muller Milk & More operates a mixed vehicle fleet, which leases and purchases vans from various OEMs.

Many OEMs come with their own basic telematics pre-installed, but the competing OEM solutions can make for a complex fleet management system when more than one vehicle manufacturer is used. Geotab’s open platform product provided a vehicle-agnostic, simple to install solution.

Compatibility with EVs is another Geotab advantage, since Muller Milk & More intends to transition the entire fleet to electric by 2025. Other telematics suppliers being considered could not read the data coming out of the vans’ electric power plants, which meant there would be a gap in fleet data.

The time spent by Geotab in developing a way to capture this data and generate meaningful reports was a key factor for Muller Milk & More when choosing Geotab as its tracking solution.

“The benefits of having a vehicle-agnostic solution is that all the data flows into one stream. This allows us to see every vehicle on one screen, irrespective of vehicle type. Having one system to operate through is of real value to the business,” says Marc.

The Results: Improved driving behaviours through driver engagement

The high engagement rate from drivers has already shown impressive results. The primary goal of adopting Geotab — improving driver behaviour — has been achieved. In only four months, there has been a reduction in instances of poor driving behaviour at Muller Milk & More, some of the key changes are listed below:-

●  Significant reduction (95%) of speeding within first two weeks
●  Improvement from 1Mile per kWh to 3 Mile per kWh
●  Improvement of MPG from 18 MPG to 25 MPG for diesel fleet
●  Significant reduction in accidents

“We just saw such a drop off of the manner in which people were driving incorrectly and it was unbelievable. This improvement in driver behaviour had another benefit too: drivers were using less power in their vehicles,” says Marc.

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