In short
- There are three arrangements: the supplier delivers on its own fleet, your fleet collects ex-plant, or market hauliers are hired per trip or per tonne-kilometre.
- For the base load of a highway package, a delivered rate on the supplier's own fleet is usually the most dependable, because schedule, short weight and peak-season risk all sit with one party.
- Market hauliers are the most flexible and the least accountable. They suit top-up loads and short peaks better than the base load.
- Collecting with your own fleet makes sense when the tippers are already on the package and would otherwise stand.
- We deliver on 55 owned tippers at a per-tonne rate with a weighbridge slip per load. Below about one tipper load a day, a local yard serves you better.
Aggregate is cheap at the plant and expensive at the road head, and the difference is a tipper. On a highway package the haulage arrangement is chosen once, early, and then lived with through two monsoons and every peak season between them.
Material gets from plant to road head in one of three ways. The supplier brings it on its own fleet at a delivered rate, your own tippers collect it ex-plant, or market hauliers are hired by the trip or the tonne-kilometre. For the base load of a package the first is usually the most dependable and the third the least. The second is right when you already have the tippers.
The three arrangements
- Supplier's own fleet, delivered rate. Material and haulage in one per-tonne rate to your road head. The firm that crushed the stone also owns the tipper and employs the driver.
- Your fleet, ex-plant. You buy at the plant gate. Your tippers queue, load, cross the plant weighbridge and leave. From there the load is yours.
- Market hauliers. Owner-drivers and small fleet owners hired through a transporter or directly, paid per trip or per tonne-kilometre. The supplier sells ex-plant and a third party carries.
Who controls the schedule
With a supplier's fleet, one dispatcher sees both the stockpile and the tippers. A delivery date is a commitment made by somebody who controls both halves of it.
With your own fleet you control the tippers but not the loading queue, and your tippers have other masters. The earthwork foreman wants them on the embankment the same morning the base course needs WMM. With market hauliers nobody controls the schedule. A market tipper takes your load until a better-paying one appears, and then the plant is producing into a full stockpile while the road head waits. The arithmetic of how many tippers a haul needs only works if the tippers come back.
Who answers for short weight
A load is weighed at the plant and arrives lighter, or is said to. Under a delivered rate there are two parties to that conversation, you and the supplier, and the weighbridge slip that travelled with the load is the record both of you agreed to use. The supplier loaded it, weighed it and carried it, so there is nobody else to point at.
Collect with your own fleet and the risk passes to you at the plant gate, which is fair, because the driver is yours. Bring in a market haulier and there are three parties. The supplier says the bridge weight is right. The haulier says he carried what was loaded. Your storekeeper says less arrived. The month-end reconciliation does not close. Weighbridge slips and reconciliation deals with how to set that up so it does.
Monsoon and peak season
In the rains the haul road softens, cycle times stretch and each tipper makes fewer trips in a day. A haulier paid by the trip earns less for the same day's diesel and the same driver, and the sensible ones leave for a metalled route. A supplier on a delivered per-tonne rate has to absorb the slower cycle, because the rate was agreed for the package and not for the dry months. Monsoon planning on a quarry and crusher site covers what else slows down.
Peak season is the opposite problem. When the weather is dry and every package in the district is laying base at once, tippers are short and the spot rate climbs. Market hauliers follow the rate. A fleet that is owned by the supplier and committed under a rate contract is not on the market, so it does not leave.
The three compared
| Point | Supplier's own fleet | Your fleet, ex-plant | Market hauliers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who controls the schedule | The supplier, plant and tippers together | You, subject to the loading queue | Nobody reliably. The haulier chooses his loads |
| Who answers for short weight | The supplier | You, from the plant gate | Disputed between supplier, haulier and site |
| What happens at peak demand | Fleet stays; the rate is contracted | Fleet stays, if earthwork can spare it | Tippers get scarce and the rate rises |
| Who carries a slow monsoon cycle | The supplier | You | The haulier, until he leaves |
| How it is billed | One per-tonne rate, delivered | Ex-plant per tonne, haulage on your books | Ex-plant per tonne, plus per trip or per tonne-km |
Billing per tonne in any column depends on a calibrated weighbridge and a slip per load.
What it does to the rate
A delivered rate will often look higher than an ex-plant rate with a market trip rate added to it. It should. It contains the driver's wages on the days it rained, the maintenance of the tipper and the risk of every item in the table above. The market rate contains none of those until the day you need them.
Distance still decides more than the arrangement does. Inside about 60 km of a plant a delivered rate is usually competitive. Beyond that, haulage starts to outweigh the stone, and bringing a plant nearer to the site normally beats hauling. Lead distance and the delivered rate works through why.
A common and sensible split is to put the base load on a committed fleet and use market tippers for the weeks when the programme compresses. The tonnes you cannot afford to miss are then carried by somebody accountable.
Where we stand
We own 55 tippers, Tata and Ashok Leyland, and the drivers work for us. Aggregate supplied from our plants goes out at a per-tonne rate delivered to the road head, with a slip from a calibrated weighbridge against every load. There is no separate freight bill.
Two caveats, stated plainly. Most of that fleet is committed to our own plants and projects, so haulage of material we did not produce depends on what capacity is free, and it is worth asking early instead of assuming. And below roughly one tipper load a day the economics change. A local yard will serve you better at that volume, and we will tell you so.
Standards and sources
- Fleet size, delivered-rate basis, weighbridge practice and delivery radius: SM Infra's own operating record
- Haulage arrangements are described from general trade practice; no freight rates or payload limits are quoted
Your contract and its technical schedules override anything written here. Check the clause before you build to it.