Guides · 1 Nov 2026

How to cut truck turnaround time at a sugar mill

Truck turnaround falls when arrivals match the crushing rate, unloading keeps pace with the queue and weighing creates no rework. Start by timestamping every stage for a week, so that you fix the actual bottleneck first.

Why turnaround matters

A vehicle waiting in the yard costs the transporter a trip and ages the cane on board. Harvested cane loses value with time.

The best Indian survey we found is old, so read it as background. A 2001 paper covering 25 factories reported that yard waiting exceeded 12 to 18 hours in many units. It also cited earlier work that about 4 percent of original recoverable sugar is lost per day of staling.

ICAR's 2007-08 annual report described a study in Pune and Kolhapur on variety Co 86032. Weight loss at 72 hours was about 16 percent in mechanically harvested cane and about 6 percent in manually harvested cane. The report recommended crushing within 24 hours of mechanical harvesting in the late season.

We found no published before-and-after turnaround figures from an Indian mill, so run your own measurement.

Measure each stage first

Long queues are visible at the bridge, so the bridge often gets blamed. The cause may sit further along the line. Record a time for each stage below, for all vehicles, for at least a week. Split the results by vehicle type and shift.

Stage	Measure from and to	Common causes of delay
Outside queue	Arrival to gate entry	Bunched arrivals, harvest slips not matched to crush rate
Gate	Gate entry to token	Manual data entry, missing permit details
Gross	Token to gross weight	One bridge in use, slow identification, reweighs
Yard	Gross weight to start of unloading	Unloading capacity, cane stacked ahead of fresh loads
Unloading	Start to end of unloading	Crane or tippler availability, feeder table full, mill stoppage
Tare	End of unloading to tare weight	Loaded and empty vehicles sharing one lane
Exit	Tare weight to gate exit	Slip printing, gate checks

Fix arrivals first

The yard can only clear vehicles at the rate the mill crushes. If cane arrives faster than that for hours at a time, faster weighing simply moves the queue from the bridge to the yard.

Simulation work from Thailand points the same way. A 2018 study of a Thai mill yard named uncertain arrival rates as a cause of long waits. That is a model of another mill, so test any change at your own.

Issue harvest slips against the planned crush rate, by zone and time band.
Spread dispatch across the day, with night bands for nearby zones.
Tell field staff the live yard position so they can hold harvesting when the yard is full.
Re-plan slips quickly after a mill stoppage, so cut cane does not pile up.

Then fix unloading

The Thai study modelled how unloading machines were allocated. Average time in the system was 10.18 hours in the base model. Allocating unloading machines by grower type brought it to 9.02 hours, a modelled reduction of 11.39 percent.

An older South African simulation found that restricting direct offloading to turn over stacked cane greatly increased vehicle delay. There is a real trade-off here. Clearing old cane matters, and so does keeping vehicles moving, so set a rule for it and review it each week.

Then fix the bridge

Gunung Madu in Indonesia reported at ISSCT in 2016 that barcode tickets cut cane identity entry from 1 to 2 minutes to under 5 seconds at the weighbridge and laboratory. The mill was handling 1,228 truck trips a day in 2015.

Use separate bridges or lanes for gross and tare where you can.
Run a one-way route so that empty and loaded vehicles do not cross.
Capture vehicle and farmer identity with a tag or barcode, with no retyping.
Capture the weight automatically once it is stable, so operators do not wait or guess.
Keep a second operator ready for peak hours and shift changes.

Keep a small buffer

An empty yard is no goal either. The mill needs enough cane to avoid no-cane stoppages. Agree a target yard stock in hours of crushing, and manage arrivals to hold it.

Where SugarOS fits

SugarOS records tokens, yard stages and weighments at the gate, which covers much of this stage data without a separate register.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good truck turnaround time for a sugar mill?

We found no reliable published benchmark for Indian mills. It depends on crush rate, vehicle mix, lead distance and yard layout. Use your own measured baseline and track it by shift.

Will a second weighbridge fix our queue?

It helps only if weighing is the bottleneck. If vehicles wait for unloading, a second bridge will simply feed the yard faster.

Does RFID reduce turnaround?

It can reduce identity entry and typing errors at the bridge. The gain depends on how much time that step takes at your mill, which is why you should measure first.

Should tractors and trucks have separate lanes?

Separate lanes are worth testing if unloading methods or timings differ by vehicle type. Your stage data will show whether one type is holding up the other.

Sources

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