"Half of every vehicle leaving our sites is air!" says Sue McGeorge, head of customer supply chain development at Kimberley-Clark.
She bases her calculations on a standard trailer capacity of 105m³, which Kimberley-Clark had previously assumed was 90% full.
However, more sophisticated analysis showed that, in total, some 48m³ was empty space, including:1.6m³ left clear at the top of the trailer to allow for loading; 4.5m³ at the rear; pallets taking up 10m³; and the space at the centre of a toilet roll taking up another 6.6m³.
"If we could improve trailer fill by just 10%, we'd take 4,000 deliveries off the road," she adds.