A thorny issue, which I know about only too well from my shifts on the roads, is the time it takes for drivers to get loaded or tipped and sometimes it shows how poorly organised the industry is.
It used to stress me out, sitting around waiting to get loaded or unloaded, now I’m more calm – I take my laptop out and simply use the time to write up any work I have outstanding.
In fact, I’ve noticed a trend. Sort of! The days I forget to take the laptop with me, are the days I’m messed about. The days I take it, then it’s a sure-fire sign the trailer will be rocking straight away as the pallets go on in double quick time.
My real beef is booking in slots. For typical RDCs, where trucks arrived, the forklift (or pallet trucks) gets to work, then booking in slots are pretty much, without fail, wholly unnecessary.
But I have two real issues with booked times for you to be unloaded. Firstly, they only suit the customer, who can make them up – seemingly at random – but then rarely adhere to them. I remember once taking a full load of spuds to a Morrisons RDC one Sunday morning. I had an 08:00 slot, so I had to be there for then. That meant a damn early start, and guess what? Yes, you guessed it, I got there in good time and was unloaded… at 09:30. A waste of over 90 minutes of my time sat around waiting to be tipped – when they couldn’t be bothered to keep to their side of the deal!
And there’s nothing you can do in that time that isn’t sitting in your cab. Yes, you can reads, or play games or – like I now do – catch up on stuff now that laptops are a thing.
But you can’t, say, go for a walk. Get some exercise, some (possibly) fresh air and a chance to get out of the cab. You have to be with your truck because you just don’t have any idea whatsoever as to when they might be bothered to unload you. If you can get on a bay straight away, that sometimes might redress that, but often you are left in a queue, frequently outside the RDC, just festering.
Then there is the other issue. Trucks don’t run to timetables. And on midweek days, especially, you have a book-in slot at, say 0900, and it should take you two hours to get there, there is no way of knowing how long it will actually take. There will be congestion on the roads, and no one can predict that. You may get held up in a road traffic incident, or suffer a diversion. A diversion that may not be overly truck-friendly.
You may not have been to the delivery point before and could get lost in trying to get there. The other day I went to a place I’d never been to and it was only when I was stone’s throw away from it, I realised I was faced with a 7.5 tonne restriction. So I had to detour. That, was, perhaps, my fault, for not doing enough research, aided by the fact the map given to me was bloody poor.
Either way, how much ‘recovery time’ do you factor in? How long’s a piece of string?
And then some places have the audacity to refuse the load or insist you book in again – and the next ‘slot’ might be hours away. All because they can simply work on a first-come, first-served basis?
And don’t get me started on places which block off bays for, seemingly few good reasons. Recently I went to a Supermarket’s RDC and out of 26 bays, just four were being used. There was a queue of 12 trucks, causing congestion and frustrating drivers. This was a nightmare. Luckily, a manager did come out and get four or five empty trailers removed off bays to allow them to be used for unloads. That sped things up a little, but I was still there for three hours and the tip actually only took 25 minutes! Such a waste of my time.
But I feel the industry wastes just too much of drivers’ time. Regularly I have arrived to collect a trailer at 10:00, and they are still loading it. Two hours later and I finally get on the road. Other times, customers who have booked a trailer for, say, 17:00, get that trailer at 17:00. Then the load isn’t ready, or is still being prepared, or often, still being picked out of the ground. You end up getting loaded at 20:00!
The other week I stopped to snap a nice Scania low loader, and got chatting to the driver who told me he’d turned up to load a digger, and it wasn’t ready to be collected, so they sent him away! I trust he got paid, but what a waste of his time, effort, and diesel!
In these days of apps, e-mails, mobile phones and other information technology, it has to be easier to communicate with hauliers and drivers to save their time. Sadly, I can’t see it happening, because, well, that would be just too simple and helpful!
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