PROVIDING STRATEGIC SOLUTIONS
At Ryder, we view every potential action through the prism of serving our customers and enabling them to deliver on their promises to their own customers. Each day, we ask ourselves how we can make a customer’s transportation or supply chain network more efficient, more effective, and safer. As companies increasingly outsource transportation and supply chain functions to save time, money, and resources, Ryder’s end-to-end logistics solutions seamlessly provide all the resources needed to allow our customers to focus on their core business and leave the rest to us.
Our Approach
Presidents of our business segments— Fleet Management Solutions (FMS), Supply Chain Solutions (SCS), and Dedicated Transportation Solutions (DTS)—oversee customer satisfaction, engagement, and relationships within their respective segments. Each business segment maintains written standards and procedures for managing customer relationships down to the individual customer level. Presidents of each segment provide an update to the Leadership Team on the performance of their respective divisions that includes customer feedback and new initiatives. Customer-focused metrics are also included in the annual goals set for our Chief Executive Officer by our independent directors.
Due to the broad variety of services we provide and our diverse customer base, Ryder cannot depend on a “one size fits all” approach. By equipping customers with diverse options and vehicle choices, we are able to support a variety of customer goals, such as improving their operational performance, lowering their carbon footprint, and promoting sustainability for their customers and stakeholders. This customer-centric approach naturally drives innovation and leads to a variety of benefits across our customers’ operations.
Advanced Vehicle Technology
Our customers directly benefit from our diverse offerings and partnerships by having increased access to new equipment and technologies that can be tailored and deployed to fit each customer’s specific needs. Our success is based on our ability to offer a broad range of sustainable options, including low-carbon diesel, alternative fuel vehicles, and other technologies and services. By collaborating with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to incorporate the latest green solutions into vehicles, we enable our customers to access more environmentally-friendly technologies when they upgrade to new equipment at the end of each lease term. Customers can also use real-time visibility of vehicle performance to identify improvements in operational efficiency. For more information on our efforts to provide advanced vehicle technologies for our customers, see Environmental Stewardship, Fleet Energy & Emissions, and Innovation in an Evolving Marketplace.
Logistics
Disruptive forces such as emerging technologies, talent shortages, and infrastructure bottlenecks continue to be a prime focus in designing and operating effective supply chains. Understanding, identifying, and overcoming these challenges to meet the rising demands of customers requires a supply chain with complete visibility, flexibility, and optimization. Ryder works behind the scenes to help our customers turn these challenges into capabilities and competitive advantages.
Our industry-leading solutions span the entire supply chain from inbound logistics to warehousing to outbound logistics and returns management. These solutions include safe and secure cross-border capabilities, cross-docking, carrier portfolio management, and brokerage. Our valued transportation providers support Ryder’s ability to offer personalized solutions and deliver on our promises to our customers. From the start, we foster the growth of these relationships by providing support with new customer onboarding, ongoing training, support for new business opportunities, and performance feedback. We have solutions to help our customers across numerous industries with the most complex transportation and logistics challenges.
Rental & Leasing
Through our rental and leasing program, customers can explore new technologies and different equipment to help us collectively identify the best fit for their business. This allows our customers to lower costs, maintain a competitive advantage, and achieve more efficient and predictable performance. Customers have the ability to upgrade to new equipment, which offers the latest technology with environmentally-friendly benefits.
Additionally, customers have the opportunity to perform real-time comparisons of vehicle performance, which can further direct business decisions for future equipment rental, leasing, or purchasing. We assist our customers in developing strategic plans, customizing solutions, and tailoring equipment to meet their evolving business needs. Collectively, OEMs, customers, and Ryder benefit from our collaboration, our quick adoption of new technologies, and our commitment to address evolving markets.
Flexible Maintenance
Proactive, preventive, and ongoing maintenance optimizes vehicle and fleet performance. This approach further drives efficiency within our business segments and for our customers by minimizing downtime, optimizing loads, and keeping the supply chain moving. Better-maintained vehicles are also more efficient and burn less fuel. Our extensive program implements rigorous preventive maintenance schedules for even the most routine care by checking tire conditions and inflation rates every time vehicles stop to refuel. For example, Ryder’s vehicle preventative maintenance and 5-point inspection process ensures that Ryder vehicles operate with optimum air tire inflation. Using properly inflated, fuel-efficient tires can result in up to 4% in fuel savings due to the low rolling resistance compared to a similar vehicle with improperly inflated fuel-efficient tires.
Our customers require flexibility and we craft our services to fit their needs, particularly when it comes to maintenance solutions. Within FMS, we offer different levels of maintenance via ChoiceLease for our leasing customers and SelectCare for our maintenance-only customers. Ryder offers three maintenance levels—Full Service, Preventative, and On-Demand—as well as three maintenance location options—Ryder operating locations, On-Site, and Mobile. These flexible service options enable our customers to choose where and when they want maintenance performed.
We have nearly 800 maintenance locations as part of our network to service and maintain commercial highway vehicles. Ryder’s On-Site alternative creates a dedicated maintenance environment—including personnel, parts, and holistic maintenance—at the customer’s designated location. Our Mobile Maintenance option provides greater flexibility for our customers beyond the traditional maintenance facility hours. With 400 fully-equipped mobile maintenance vehicles in North America, our certified technicians will arrive at the location of idle vehicles to conveniently handle maintenance.
Ensuring Customer Business Continuity
Our customers rely on Ryder’s maintenance and service infrastructure to keep their businesses running smoothly. Our experienced technicians provide maintenance on a variety of vehicle types, including those with new engine technology, which allows our customers to feel more comfortable when making the decision to adopt new vehicle technologies. We also offer services to help our customers better mitigate risk and reduce their environmental footprint while ensuring compliance.
Our SCS and DTS customers specifically rely on Ryder to deliver their products and manage their inventory even during unexpected events and natural disasters. Ryder works with customers to develop individualized business continuity plans that align with their specific business risks, which allows Ryder to meet their needs in the event of an emergency, such as a natural disaster.
For our FMS customers that rely on our fleet leasing, rental, fueling, and maintenance services, we communicate via our corporate website, emails, and apps such as RyderGyde™ when service is disrupted during natural disasters or other emergencies. Our Corporate Communications and FMS Operations teams work together to update and communicate Ryder’s hours of operation and available facilities to provide fuel and maintenance. Depending on the nature of the crisis, our sales team may reach out to specific customers, as needed, to determine additional actions necessary to ensure business continuity.
We maintain a comprehensive fuel supply network through Ryder's Energy Distribution Company (REDCO), which responds quickly to both natural and man-made disruptions in fuel supply. For example, Ryder helps customers prepare for hurricanes and other approaching storms by implementing contingency plans in storm-prone areas that include the provision of fuel management. Critical customer freight is moved early, and inventory loads are repositioned in advance to avoid potential storm impacts.
Customer Engagement & Satisfaction
Ryder takes customer feedback seriously and works to improve customer satisfaction by increasing the frequency of engagement, asking for critical feedback, and responding with transparency so we can direct customers to the appropriate people to address an issue. Our sales and operations personnel meet with Ryder customers quarterly to conduct a business review, as well as annually to monitor performance. We analyze customer feedback in an effort to deliver continuous improvement to our level of service. It is equally important to learn from our challenges and from our successes—efficiently and effectively addressing customer experiences to improve our service delivery and increase retention, and ultimately, profitability.
Our FMS segment operates a Ryder Assist Now call center for customers to discuss any challenges they may face when working with Ryder. The call center, which is open 24 hours a day, provides customers with a one-stop shop for any questions on various issues, such as vehicle maintenance or invoicing support. FMS leads the industry in vehicle uptime, a measurement of our vehicle usability, which accounts for breakdowns, response time, and timeliness of repairs.
In both our SCS and DTS segments, Ryder employees working directly with our customers receive real-time insights and data from active engagement. SCS tracks and reports on various metrics based on individual customer needs which may include labor efficiencies, inventory turn, on-time deliveries, timeliness, organization, or other LEAN practices. DTS gauges our delivery times against customer expectations with our current on-time delivery success rate.
Ryder is proud of the amount of independent, external recognition we’ve received for our business practices and our commitment to our customers, employees, and stakeholders.
Read more about our Customer Awards and Industry & Media Awards on our website.