Falling Behind?

PFlash

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From what I read in the Food Service Forums, it looks like most of us use some kind of GPS/Logging/DOT thingymabob that tracks our time. It also seems that at least some of you use the XATA system, which is what my company (Lipari Foods) uses to monitor driver performance. My question is this : how many of you fall behind the scheduled delivery times on a consistent basis? My routes are pretty diverse and I manage to get ahead on the longer mileage days. However, when I run the city I'm consistently behind the computer's estimations. It's never been mentioned to me by the company or anything, I'm just curious as to how accurately other folks run their routes. Thanks!
 
I use XATA. I fall behind all the time in the city, on my long bids I do great, they don't give is enough time to compensate for traffic ect, its like they time it to the way the crow flyes, thats Sysco for ya, they are so friggin stupid, plus its a way to axe our pay, if cases per man hour are up I make more money, but now we are on an average or a stupid salary, since this new program is kicking in, on ABC I was working 3 days a week, now that Im paid the same I work 5, I have slowed down alot, unless speeding up benefits me, no one has said squat.
 
I usually get back a hr behind but i don't get in a hurry. There is guys that beat the manifest 1-2 hrs. I work for PFG and we use Peoplenet
 
Right now we use nothing. Have people net in the trucks but are only used for tracking fuel mileage. They can pinpoint us but never really bother. As for schedule delivery times, never heard of such a thing. Unless it's an appointment for a pick up, we pretty much make our own schedules on our routes. Just make it before the cut off time at certain stops is all they ask, if possible. Not always possible when they have a habit of throwing extra stops on your truck. Not my fault if I don't make it.
 
It also depends on your routing delivery window start times, we were on Xata and for what for whatever reason our dispatcher/router would have delivery windows starting before you could physically get there under any circumstances. If it becomes an issue have them adjust the windows, just back it with drive times, delivery conflicts or whatever.
 
It also depends on your routing delivery window start times, we were on Xata and for what for whatever reason our dispatcher/router would have delivery windows starting before you could physically get there under any circumstances. If it becomes an issue have them adjust the windows, just back it with drive times, delivery conflicts or whatever.

At Sysco, they would laugh at me if I did that, they do what they want, its hard to file a grievence if there isn't an atricle represented, we can and do, but still its a process.
 
Today was so friggin stupid, 1100 cases and didn't clock off till 1830, had to jump stops to get schools off that were routed late, I suggested that the router be called in to help me but I'm sure ya'll can guess how that went, now the warehouse not only hides cases in other pallets, they are putting our splits, or eaches, not on the split pallet but inside another pallet, I'm about tired of the loading here, it has gotten so much worse in the past 6 months, we are working alot harder than we have to.

I had 396 cases on a pup monday of this week and I swear I felt like I delivered 700 cases at the end of the route, how can anyone F-up 396 cases?
 
..........now the warehouse not only hides cases in other pallets, they are putting our splits, or eaches, not on the split pallet but inside another pallet, I'm about tired of the loading here, it has gotten so much worse in the past 6 months, we are working alot harder than we have to.

I had 396 cases on a pup monday of this week and I swear I felt like I delivered 700 cases at the end of the route, how can anyone F-up 396 cases?

This must be standard practice anymore for all food service companies. I thought it was just our warehouse that did that crap.
 
This must be standard practice anymore for all food service companies. I thought it was just our warehouse that did that crap.

This is every day with us multiple times in a day, at PFG is was every now and then, maybe twice a month when a selector made an error, at Tankersley, it was never, here we are having problems, the warehouse is mad so they take it out on us, if we get mad we have no one to take it out on, so we report each occurance, and complain among ourselves to ease the tension.
 
Well I wrote a little song about it, been promising our drivers to record it and pass out the mp3, but haven't gotten around to it and it doesn't look promising this weekend, but maybe later I'll post the mp3 here. In the mean time sit back and imagine I'm singing the Gilligan's Island theme song with these words:

Just sit right back and I'll tell you all
The reasons I was late
It started with eight hundred cases
on a twenty eight

The loader has been smoking crack
of that we can be sure
He danced around with shrinkwrap
But the pallets weren't secure, the pallets weren't secure

The router always makes it rough
The trailer load was tossed
If not for the guidance of the GPS
The driver would be lost, the driver would be lost

The door is blocked by a boner box
It's gonna take a while

The Selector
was sniffing glue
I cannot find
the last case
on the wrong truck
Or a mispick or it's buried and
YOU C****UCKER MOTHER F***

I'm gonna need a faster truck
To keep up with these drive times
oh what the hell my first three stops
don't show up 'till nine

My biggest stops won't take at noon
I'll do my very best
to hop over three hundred cases
And deliver to the rest

No trailer lights no extra men
No time to take a sh**
But if you fall too far behind
The boss will pitch a fit

It happens every day my friends
There's much to be desired
We'll have to make the best of things
Till we all get fired
 
We use road net for our paper manifests, and xata for whatever. If I am on time for my first stop the xata says I am 5 minutes early, if I am on time for my last stop, the xata says I am 10-15 minutes late. I asked the stuporvisor and he said he has no idea where the xata gets its times.

So let me tell you about the stuporvisor. There were three supervisors when I hired on, I believe all were drivers at one time, at least two were. There was also an office girl and a router. Then there is the superdupervisor who is over both transportation and warehouse. Okay, the superdupervisor had just come in from out of town shortly before I was hired. A few months after I was hired the head supervisor left and they didn't tell us why, shortly thereafter the stuporvisor showed up also from out of town. Within two years they fired one supervisor and the other quit. The stuporvisor did such a bad job that they busted him down to routing, and they made the router head supervisor. Everybody liked the router who became head supervisor, he was reasonable and you could talk to him. The office girl left to have a baby. There were two openings for supervisors, I interviewed but was passed over in favor of a goof off from the warehouse who had a little driving experience and the husband of the office girl (our guess is he could call his wife if he had questions) The goof off was fired for extortion. The stuporvisor was transferred to the night warehouse and within six months his innovative changes (to make it easier on the warehouse personnel) screwed things up unbelievably for the drivers. The router that became head supervisor quit. I heard he got tired of not being able to fix things, there's a lot of pressure from corporate, sales reps, and things I don't want to understand, (still no excuse for not fixing the things you can control). There was an appropriate grieving period, and nobody would dare step up so they gave the job back to the stuporvisor and they put the office girl's husband in the night warehouse. A few months later the stuporvisor was busted back down to routing and we now have a new out of town clown trying to run things, I hope he does better.

When I first started I would do the city schools a lot. I would start at 5, have 600 cases or so and 14 or 15 stops, I would be scheduled to finish around 5. If I fell behind, I could bust my butt and catch up. One day I had someone come help me, and we couldn't catch up, I showed him the manifest and asked why aren't we making up any time? He said look, pointing to the manifest, they are not giving you enough time to drive from place to place. The stops used to be timed at 90 cases per hour across the board, if you had 45 cases you'd have a half hour to do it, 30 cases, you'd have 20 minutes. I think they did this because they can't control road net's drive time so well. If you can find the right cases, you can usually deliver more than 90 cases per hour and keep up.

During the stuporvisor's first tour as router he cranked the times way down. The few faster drivers who were always getting done a couple of hours early were now getting done on time, and the rest were regularly falling behind. Some stops were timed at 130 cases per hour instead of 90 some are timed at 150 or more. And I want to know if I have a stop with 24 cases, how can I get it in in nine minutes when I have to bust apart two seven foot tall pallets to find the cases? The city schools were kept at 90 cases per hour, except the premium stops, which were now 100 cases per hour. Premium stops are those where you have to get on an elevator, go up or down 15 stairs, or have to walk over 150 feet. These take longer to do, but the stuporvisor had the wisdom to give us less time to do it. I talked to him about the timing, he said it was not 90 cases per hour (I swear it was) but it was 100 cubes per hour. His thinking was, well less cubes, more you can fit on the dolly, sometimes you can wheel 25 cases of produce in at once, if you have a lot of splits it shouldn't take as long to deliver. I said, well that doesn't take into account that I still have to find x amount of cases (and now I have to scan each one) and the customer has to check in x amount of cases, the actual walking the product in doesn't take that much time unless it is a premium stop or the cases are heavy. So now the only way we can catch up or get ahead is if the customer has ordered lots of paper products, potato chips or bread... big boxes = more cubes = more time. Last Thursday I had three schools on my route, schools generally get all the same things, so probably a similar amount of cubes. First school: 19 cases, 19 minutes to deliver it, second school: 19 cases, 15 minutes to deliver it, third school: 64 cases, 24 minutes to deliver it????? A couple of years ago I started writing on the manifest, what time I got there and what time I left so I could determine how much time I lost or gained delivering and how much I lost driving, and still the stuporvisor wants to argue because the xata says differently, although he can't tell me when the xata actually starts and stops the driving clock, I could be spending several minutes backing or waiting for friggen US foods to move, but the xata says I'm goofing off. Last year my Monday route was 12 stops, 800 cases, 100 miles and they would give me 12 hours to do it, Tuesday it was 15 stops, 850 cases and 120 miles and they would give me 11 hours to do it, that's how screwed up the stuporvisor has made things. When I first started I was falling behind because I was new. I'm much faster now, but I still fall behind sometimes.

Where was I? Oh yeah road net. Road net was UPS logistics something and they sold it to someone else. Anyhow them there little brown trucks take off a mite bit faster than I can, also they have 150 to 200 stops each day, and... they are routed in such a way as they only have to make right hand turns, or at least the left hand turns are limited. There are a heck of a lot more of those brown truck out and about than grocery trucks I think meaning they are staying in a much smaller area, and this would make a lot of difference. On Fridays, it is just over four miles from the dock at my first stop to the back door of my second stop. There are three left hand turns, two right hand turns, three stoplights and a really big hill that I can only get up to 45 mph on. They give me 3 minutes to get there. I CAN'T GET OUT OF THE &$@#$^&%# *+(&^% PARKING LOT IN THREE MINUTES!!! If you are going a certain distance, road net assumes you are on a highway, but in an urban area, the most direct route probably isn't on the highway, so the further you have to drive, the more time you lose. My Tuesday route used to be two separate routes but they merged them, so there is a lot of customers pissed off because they aren't delivered in the morning anymore. They have changed that route several times this year to accommodate the angry customers only to **** off someone else, so it keeps changing. In any case I am jerked back and forth between the two areas all day and I lose between 10 and 25 minutes every time I leave one area to go to the next, and I'm back and forth several times that day.

So yes, in a rural area it is easier for me to keep up. In an urban area, if the stops are close together, it's not so bad, but if you have to go several miles between stops, forget it.

For a long time we were wondering why the superdupervisor hadn't been fired with the way things are run (not all covered in this post) and the rumor was he was in real tight with the number 4 man in the corporation. But even more mystifying was why the stuporvisor still has a job, the rumor is that the stuporvisor is married to the superdupervisor's sister. If these rumors are true, then everything makes sense. But they are just rumors, I have no actual evidence, and I hope I don't get fired for spreading rumors, sorry I'm a bit paranoid.

Anyhow, what's this quick reply button for? Do I need to use another button if I go on and on?
 
Forgot to mention... they sometimes like to string several small stops in a row, 13 to 25 cases each for 4 or 5 stops, big time killer.

Wednesdays my first stop is about 20 cases, but I have to move over 100 cases to get them out of the trailer, the sales reps are waiting for me at the second stop to pick up their drop ships, I tell them just to add 25 minutes to the manifest time, that's when I'll be there.
 
We can't keep routers, we have a good one now, I hope he stays, our last router went back to delivery, the one before that got promoted to supervisor and is now the transportation manager, the one before him got promoted to supervisor and went from transportation to operations, he was a good one, a young guy, but a good one, he gave me my road test, said I was the only one in a year of road tests that didn't hit the curb on the turn from hwy 77 on the tecumseh, so I like him..LOL! Oh I forgot, we had one router, between one of the others that IDK what happened to him, I never heard.

Guys and our supervisor at our shuttle site are always complaining about our current router, I think he does a good job, he communicates with me, thats all I ask.
 
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