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?