I guess in any type of organization whether it be a trucking company, a retail store such as Wal Mart, a football team, etc.,etc.,etc. Their is a manager, coach or whatever name is given to lead. Yes, I was a SCM with Con-way for 22 years, retiring about 10 years ago, so my experience goes back to the early years of CCX. Much of my work was not seen by the average employee, but was work that was expected and required by the corporate. But, my work didn’t end at that, I worked in operations in the beginning , plus having to perform my duties as a Scm. Over the years, I was fortunate to have Fos to handle the operations. Toward the end of my career, I had supervisors getting 4-5 weeks Vacations and I filled their position, same with a clerk who was off on vacation or called in sick. Worked double shifts many times when someone called off due to sickness. Oftentimes , because of the demands of the region office or corporate, it was very difficult to be involved to be involved in operations. For most of my career, SCM were required to have 20-30 sales accounts and make monthly sales calls, also riding monthly with drivers, sales personnel, performing self audits, training ,hiring, and a lot of that was done. As a manager, It could take 10 hours to hire one employee, from interviews, back ground checks, training , etc. probably hired over 100 people during my career. The list goes on and on. I always enjoyed going to the service center on weekends to take inventory, getting called out during the middle of the night to let a Dsr in the terminal who forgot his key, or taking a Dsr to meet a linehaul Dsr who ran out of hours, often on a Saturday morning, replacing decals on tractors which always occurred in January when it was zero weather. Granted, their was a lot of busy work, was it all needed, probably not. Am I complaining, no! I worked a lot of hours, made a decent living, made a lot of friends with both SCM and Dsr, some I regularly keep in touch with almost ten years after retiring. So, yes, I believe you need a leader, regardless what type of business you may be employed at. Unfortunately, in any company, their are often positions that do not generate revenue and may effect the bottom line, but they are necessary to succeed.
high? Or just completely out of touch with what’s going on?
