Sealand Liquids: ISO Tank Fleet Visibility and Utilization
Client:
Sealand Liquids, a transport and logistics company operating an ISO tank fleet.
Challenge:
The team had to reconstruct fleet location and operational status from telematics, depot gate records, transport orders, cleaning station records, and lease schedules. These sources did not provide a consistent view of tank availability. Lease costs continued to accrue while tanks stood idle, but sales and operations teams lacked the information needed to compare accepting a lower-priced load with leaving a tank unused.
Key Success Metrics:
- Fleet utilization increased from 37% in 2022 to 53% in 2023, an improvement of 16 percentage points.
- Gross profit per tank-day increased by 21% over the same annual comparison.
- The client's team took over platform operations and further development.
Business Challenge
Fleet location, operational status, idle cost and sales pricing each lived in a different source, so no team could see whether a tank should wait, move, or take a lower-priced load.
Fragmented fleet location and status data
Each source covered only part of the operating cycle. Teams had to combine records manually to determine a tank's location, current status, and when it would become available.
Limited visibility into idle costs
Lease costs continued during idle periods, but reporting did not consistently connect those costs to individual tanks, locations, and the duration of each idle period.
Repositioning decisions without a consistent fleet view
The company assessed empty repositioning case by case. Operations teams lacked a consolidated view of waiting times and availability to support decisions about where tanks should move next.
Sales decisions disconnected from fleet economics
Sales teams worked from a rate card without a reliable view of available tanks and their standing costs. This made it difficult to assess whether a lower-priced load offered a better commercial outcome than continued idle time.
Reporting too aggregated for daily decisions
Fleet-level utilization figures did not provide the detail or timeliness needed to act on individual tanks, locations, and transport lanes.
Architecture and Tech Stack
Fleet, lease and sales data were consolidated on Snowflake, with transformation logic in dbt and reporting in Power BI.
Snowflake
dbt
Power BI
Implementation and Solution
A three-person team delivered the nine-month engagement. The work connected fleet status, lease costs, utilization, and sales decisions through six stages.
Position source audit
Reviewed telematics, depot gate records, transport orders, cleaning station records, and lease schedules to identify gaps and conflicting information about tank location and status.
Unified tank-day ledger
Consolidated source records into a daily view of each tank, connecting its location and operational status to a consistent reporting structure.
Idle-day cost allocation
Connected lease costs to individual tanks and idle days, making the cost of standing visible by tank and location.
Utilization reporting by tank, location, and lane
Developed reporting that allowed teams to examine utilization and waiting periods below the fleet-wide level and identify where operational action was needed.
Availability and pricing support for sales
Connected tank availability and cost information to sales decisions, supporting comparisons between available loads and continued idle time.
Knowledge transfer and team enablement
Transferred platform knowledge and supported the client's internal team in taking responsibility for ongoing operation and development.
Nine months. Three-person delivery team.
Results (ROI)
Fleet utilization and gross profit per tank-day both improved year on year, and the client's own team now runs the platform.
Fleet utilization up 16 percentage points
Fleet utilization rose from 37% in full year 2022 to 53% in full year 2023.
Gross profit per tank-day up 21%
Indexed gross profit per tank-day rose from 100 in full year 2022 to 121 in full year 2023.
Client-owned platform operation and development
The client operates and extends the platform with its own team, supporting continued development as operational and reporting needs evolve.
Measurement method
Fleet utilization is tank-days under a paying load divided by total tank-days in the defined fleet, using the same calculation and fleet inclusion criteria in both periods. Gross profit per tank-day is fleet gross profit divided by total tank-days, indexed to full year 2022 = 100. Comparison periods: full year 2022 and full year 2023.
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