A slippery slope

[MikeJ]

So today,
I tried some new things out on the road today, I had 21 stops 5 kegs and 449 cases or something like that, it was a full Monday.
In fact one of the night supervisors looked at my trailer this morning and said "Mike, you got a full Monday that's for sure."

Any how, I said lets light it up and hit the road. I got my first delivery done at 07:29 in the morning and got my last delivery done at 13:40.

I had two refusals, one customer refused to pay the $10.00 delivery charge. Then another customer I get there and the guy says uh I can't pay for this right now, I'll get you next week. So I said "okay" Both of those were lower case count customers. One was only 5 cases the other was like 11. The one that they didn't want to pay the delivery charge I still had to unload it wheel it in then wheel it out and reload it.

Any how I kept on going was finished for the day totally heading to my car by about 3:10pm.
I tried some new things like getting more on my wheeler and stacking things differently.
I'll show what I mean when I have a chance. Like 4/6s are packed so you can put them side by side on the wheeler and then you have a nice foundation so you can side stack the LNRs as well. LNRs the problem with those is they are not strong enough to side stack unless you have a strong base of of flats or 4/6s.

Now obviously sometimes you can't do things like that all the time, single serves you can only do so much with. 12 packs you can't do a whole lot with. 16oz 6 packs are packed in such a matter that you have to put those on top.

Also where I work we sell a lot of wine and I have two drug stores on my Monday that get a lot of mixed wine and you can't do anything with mixed wine, it doesn't stack well on the wheeler, now the flip side is, mixed wine isn't all that heavy, but it's a little bit of a pain.

Any how stacked my wheeler better mapped out my truck better (where everything is on the truck, that probably saved some time right there) any how today seemed fairly quick.

Now the only problem with working quick is sometimes it can lead to stupid paper work errors. I was in a big hurry got ahead of my self and screwed up an invoice today voided it out on accident. Now that wasn't the end of the world, when I went to check out at the end of the day the woman at the window was able to bring that invoice back to life and that's all history. Had another stupid paper work error to where I took off the wrong product on someone else's invoice what happened was the warehouse miss picked a case of wine, I went to remove it and the invoice on my hand held wasn't very clear as to what product was what and I took off the wrong case of wine. Now that wasn't as big a deal because both cases cost the same amount of money, so they fixed that to, which like I said just dumb adjustments, and really, I haven't had any stupid paperwork errors in a while. I always tell my self, it's just a minor paper work error all of that can be fixed with the stroke of a pen.

Sometimes when I'm moving I just want to go and I think I have to sometime stop and take a deep breath for a second, because you know after all everyone is going to flatten out, you can only do so much and that's the other thing too, it's a slippery slope how long before it's well he can do a little more so lets give him more. Now okay eventually they will say well even if he can do more it still takes more time, and we only want to pay so much over time. However that whole thing is a slippery slope, all of a sudden you start getting quicker and now instead of being done at 3:30pm your done at 2:00pm or 1:45pm and then boom here's a few more. Obviously I can't control all that, but just a thought.

 

[grocerythrower]

Thats how we are Mike, you do 800 cases for 15 stops and get done 3 hrs early, the next week you get 900 for 18, I just keep a steady pace, I chat with my customers, if they need my time for an extra 15 minutes, well Sir, they get it. Our incentive has been butchered to the point that its pointless to try and achieve it, my goal is to have a good day every day, no matter what. 9 times out of 10 I do! That one other time I usually pull it together shortly, I found that if I keep a steady pace I'm much faster than if I try and run like my ass is on fire.

 

[kboomarang]

Mike, Like GT said set a comfortable pace for yourself, if you have big day you'll have a little extra left to it turn up, it will become routine and you'll be able to look at your load lists and be able to tell what you need to do and what stops to do it at,and it goes for customer service too, set a level that you do no matter what, customers like knowing what they can expect from you, and I know when I would be running way behind (breakdown,weather or whatever) and alot of customers I had sensed that and would say "just drop it there we'll take care of it" to help you out, a little payback for them, and set a level of safety too when driving or delivering, if your crossing that line, your brain will let you know and ask you "hey what are you doing".

 

[grocerythrower]

Well said K!

 

[MikeJ]

So today I got out of the gate an hour late. It wasn't horrible, I've been out of the gate later, and actually somewhere during the day I made time, because I got to the second half of my day about the same time I normally would have. Anyhow, today I wasn't running as fast and my case count wasn't as high as it's been not even 400, but I had 23 stops, so okay less cases, but more stops one cancels the other out.

Any how I was out on the road for maybe 7 hours and had a 1.5-2 hour wait this morning to get loaded. I got back to the yard at 16:30 after leaving the yard at 0800 so I was on the road for roughly 7 hours and maybe had 45 minutes back at the yard finishing up. Any how like I said somewhere during the day I was able to make a little bit of time. I had maybe a 11 hour day today wanted a 9, but got an 11 I'm trying to keep my hours down to get this route. However, some of the veteran guys who do other routes who left before I did got back a little after I did or around the same time. The other guys who run next to me the guy who does down town and the guy who does west of me they got back a tad after me. The guy who runs west of me I think sometimes his stop count isn't as high as mine like him and I had the same case count today, but he had 19 stops to my 23 and I beat him back. He had a little farther run from the shop then I did, but not that much farther. So the fact that I was able to leave at the same time the assigned route guys did and get back and had my truck stripped and parked while they were pulling in means maybe I wasn't doing as bad as I though ha-ha!

Here is my wheeler and this isn't the greatest example, but you get the idea of how I have been loading it, when I can and I can get 14 cases on it in certain circumstances instead of 10 or 12 I get more production out of it.


If I had an extended wheeler which is about as tall as I am I could get even more on it, the problem is that would be to much, sometimes I load this thing up with 8 4/6s and some stuff on top of that, and I can't rock it back because it weights as much as I do!