Quote:
Originally Posted by mcbride
ATeam;
Why not do away with the express centers? If loads are being dispatched to five areas what is the point of positioning a truck within 50 miles of a particular location. What is the point of attaining a #1 status in an express center if loads are being dispatched to five other express centers? Furthermore, comparing the “load opportunity” quandaries with regards to a white glove truck to a surface expedite truck is not analogous.
As you have pointed out several times, you are almost always pre-planned on loads; therefore, the impact of the “load opportunity” on your business is limited. Surface trucks are not as often pre-planned, if at all. You have also pointed out the positioning is the key to getting loads. With this system, positioning can get, at best---complicated, at worse--- impossible.
|
I don't know why you are asking me about the need for express centers. You seem more informed about the dispatch system than me. Intentionally, I have limited my knowledge of the system to what our carrier has provided in writing and personal experience. With new developments like this, driver speculation and rumoring runs rampant. I prefer to get my info from authorative sources. Drivers may speak with absolute certainty about how the new system works, but they may also be wrong.
I have some of the same gripes as you and have provided feedback to our contractor coordinator. I am confident that the bugs will be worked out and am patient enough to allow the time for it to happen. Application development is not easy. I am mindful of the challenge the programmers have and am content to let them do their thing.
Why not do away with express centers? My GUESS would be that express centers remain important from the carrier's point of view because they are reference points used to positon trucks and optimize the ability to meet customer needs.
If you have number one status in an express center and a load you are eligible for comes up, it does not matter how many other trucks are also eligible for the load. You remain number one and should get the load. The exception may be if a reefer or other specialty truck is needed at the delivery express center for that load and you are not a reefer truck. In that case, the system may bump you down in favor of the needed specialized truck and/or team.
At least I think that is so. The above is not from FedEx. It is from me and should be given no more credibility than just another driver's idea about how the system may work. I know enough about the system to make it work for me. I don't know how the overall system works, and I don't need or want to know.
Regarding pre-planned loads, when things are busy, we are often predispatched on a load before we deliver the current load. But when things are slow, that is not the case. Nor is it the case that we are "almost always" pre-planned on loads.
For example, on Friday we delivered a load in Raleigh, NC and parked to wait for the next load offer. (I don't like the word "oppertunity" either. It is unprofessional and feels like someone is trying to sell me something. Though, I have had fun calling dispatchers with a counter-offer giving them the "opportunity" to raise the pay.
)
We were not predispatched. With three straight-trucks already checked into Raleigh, we pretty-much expected an offer for a Monday pickup if we received an offer at all, on a Friday afternoon. We settled in for what we figured would be a weekend wait. But an offer came. It picks up in an express center several hundred miles away. The money was OK. We are deadheading there now for a Monday pickup.
With trucks already in that express center and Raleigh, and other centers a few hundred miles around, why did we get the load? Well, we did not get it the first time. The offer came, we accepted and it went to another truck. Then a second, nearly-identical offer came but with a different run number. We accepted and got that one.
What happened? My GUESS is a shipper has multiple loads going out that require specialized trucks and teams. Having already used the ones nearby, dispatch reached further out. In doing so, it passed over probably dozens of trucks in multiple express centers, but they would have been passed over anyway, since they were not qualified to haul this particular kind of freight.
I don't see much of a problem with this. After all, if you don't have a liftgate on your truck, you are not in a position to complain that you don't get liftgate loads.
We did not get the offers because of problems with the new dispatch system. We got them because we were qualified and available to haul the freight. Old dispatch system or new, the result would have been the same.