Considering that we're at least 10 to 15 years behind our competition in technology. That'd be the first place I'd start. Knowing what each individual bill consists of and knowing exactly where it's at, at any given time in the system. Being able to have some sort of inbound/outbound planning. As it stands right now, unless someone actually takes the time to read through all of the inbound manifests, we'd would never know that we have enough freight to fill a trailer that we would normally just send through another break. Being able to build a solid load through WMX or MEM. All that'd have to be done is, a break and a re-hook on that pup. Technology would also help reduce the amount of misloads. Freight being sent to wrong terminals, or the co-mingling of hazmat classes that shouldn't be loaded together. It'd also help prevent over-loading. Taking away a lot of our inefficiences would be a great way to not have to pay 1 guy for doing something that should have never happened in the first place, allowing them to actually pay a driver to sit and wait on his load or his set.
Next thing I'd do is start trying to ween ourselves off all this horrible HD freight. We need to decide as a freight system if we want to be HD's private in house carrier or we want to be a national Ltl carrier. I'm not saying get rid of the HD freight, its about the only thing keeping us afloat right now, but building on that freight, to make sure you guys aren't pulling empty sets up and down the highway all night.
I'm not a driver but I do appreciate one thing that Estes does for as many as they can and thats to provide you with a set schedule. I'm not sure how it works at many of the big places (yellow, Roadway, Abf.) I'm assuming they all have call boards for dock/road/city, and we don't have that here. All the dock guys have a set start and end time, and don't have to sit around a phone and not be able to plan anything. But not having that sort of system it seems sometimes backfires, you'll have 10 guys on the dock with nothing to do, besides push a broom. When you could call them in when there is freight that needs moved. Drivers that have a set run and all they're going to do is pull a set of empties in and leaving with a set of empties out. When there might be freight available to go somewhere else but not back where they came from. Instead of having to take whats available. It just seems like the company's willingness to pay for someone to do nothing should be their willingness to pay OT after 40 or to pay drivers for time spent on the clock but not driving.
I've got a lot of ideas on this crap and I'm interested in hearing anyone else's take on stuff.
:smilie_132:
driver that makes less per Mile???