Transporter på väg - En studie över Sveriges lastbilscentralers metoder för att möta ökande drivmedelspriser
Background and problem: In the last few years the threat against the environment and especially the emissions of carbon dioxide has become increasingly debated. The government have set up a goal to lower the emissions of carbon dioxide with 40 percent until 2020 compared to the level in 1990. The emissions in the transportation sector have, in contrast to the total emissions, increased since 1990 and will continue to increase unless powerful control measures are implemented. The lorry centres have to use strategies to answer to these external threats which lead us to the two questions of this thesis: - What methods do the lorry centres use actively and which do they consider as the most important methods for fuel saving? - Are there any differences which methods small, medium and large centres considers as important? Purpose: The main purpose of this thesis is to examine which methods lorry centres use actively and which they consider as important for fuel saving. Method: The thesis uses a web survey and phone interviews. We used a web survey to be able to generalise our result to all the 82 Swedish lorry centres. The selection for the web survey was 41 centres and 32 of them replied to the survey. We choose to do three phone interviews to get a deeper understanding of the lorry centres? strategy management. Result and conclusions: Our results show that the lorry centres consider EcoDriving, Fleet Management, New trucks and Service of trucks as the most important methods for fuel saving. These four methods, together with Environmental management certificate, are also the methods that the lorry centres work with most actively. The most interesting and also the largest differences can be found between large and small companies. The main differences are between Mobile IT and Alternative fuels. Both these methods are ranked high among the large centres and low among the small centres. A couple of important points regarding strategy from a classical perspective were identified in the phone interviews. The interviews indicate that because of the lack of strong owners the leaders in some centres have the possibiltity for a powerful position. The survey and the interviews show that the centres have a strong focus on profit maximization. Working with fuel saving methods leads to more customers through lower prices and more customers because of the improved environmental image. We belive that it is important that the lorry centers are proactive when working with fuel saving. They may otherwise have problems adjusting to customers and governments increasing demands.