Anyone with clout

miguy1957

Expert Expediter
Is there anyone with Clout or repore with Panther, That can let them know that it is important to let us know the area that their new boards cover?? So we know what cities that each board covers. Seeing that I have been sitting at home in michigan all week I have went from 2nd 2 miles out on a 2 a day board to 5th 75 miles out on a 3 a day board and havent moved a board position since they changed the boards. ( Im not going out untill after the holiday) So it would be nice if I knew how far from home I will have to DH to get on a productive board. Before they changed the boards there was 10-15 loads comming out within 50 miles of me and I was on 4 boards. since they started this being on 1 board only my earnings has been cut in half, anyone else in the same boat??
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davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
Not sure of your vehicle size, but you will likely have to do a macro 8 to see the activity from the surrounding boards, and then base your decision on that.
 

miguy1957

Expert Expediter
Im in a cago van. I know i can do a macro 8, but we now have only 4 boards Bay city south, romulus and 1 directly west on the other side of the state and caro and 1 directly west on the other side of the state. It would be nice to know where they start and stop. I plotted them on a map and these 4 boards cover the whole state south of a line from Caro to Muskegon......... I live just outside Flint and its 74 miles from port huron/ caro (the board Im on )and 79 miles to Romulus I would like to know how far south I would have to go to to get on the Roumlus board??? Because from what I am told you must be on the board that the load comes out ,... You can be only a few miles out and sitting alot longer from a load but on a different board and you wont be seen by dispatch and they will send someone that is 50mi+ out to get it with you only a few miles out unless no one is on that board then they do a radis search. It dont make sence to me but thats what I was told.................
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MR.SNAPPY

Veteran Expediter
Owner/Operator
First off I have no clout and probably not liked by to many dispatchers. I no longer have the Detroit area in my map but on occasion I will take a load going to Canada that will swap in Romulus. I am in a straight truck so depending on hours and the amount of trucks in the Mi area I will move to battle creek or FT.Wayne, which is now the Colombia city ,IN board. I use the driver webb site more than macro 8 to determine the truck and load count. it will also give you the nearby boards.. after 4 1/2 years with Panther and these new boards I feel like a newbie. there has been times when my decision is based on a flip of the coin making my chances 50/50 of making the right decision......Good luck!!!!!
 

miguy1957

Expert Expediter
Yea I myself have been with Panther just over 5 yrs myself,and it seem like they just TRY to make things more difficult than it has to be. These new changes to the boards are getting old ............ Why not simplify things and just go on dwell time alone ?? When a load comes up the one that has been empty the longest and can get to the load on time gets it. NO boards No board positions Just dwell time positions from your last load or from when you came back into service. So if you sat in a nowhere place for 3 or4 days you wouldnt start at the bottom when you did get back to a productive area.. Seems alot more fair way for everyone, but thats just my oppinon.........
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Turtle

Administrator
Staff member
Retired Expediter
It defies belief how the boards have been updated. They went out of their way to complicate the simple, and where intelligence and effort were actually needed, they took the path of least resistance. They consolidated the boards without any real regard to where they freight comes out and without regard to board geographical boundaries. Oh, they will deny this and say just the opposite, but that dog won't hunt. Case in point, we have a Paris, KY board.

Paris, KY is not a hotbed of expedite activity, but that's where the computer will send you when you drop off in Lexington. Newbies and other people not familiar with the area will waste time and fuel running up to Paris only to find little or no freight coming out of there, not to mention no place to layover for a load. That's a serious problem if you log and are about to run out of hours. They end up wasting more fuel and time to come back to Lexington or Georgetown. It's stoopid. Call a spade a spade and rename that board as the Lexington board.

If you plot the KY boards you will see that they have no correlation whatsoever to where freight comes out. Instead, the nine Kentucky boards are distributed nearly evenly across the state. This is not a board redesign with the primary goal of positioning the fleet for freight. It is, however, stellar example of gross incompetence.

Get rid of Auburn and call it Bowling Green. Get rid of Sandy Hook and call it Morehead, 'cause that's where the freight is! Get rid of Gradyville and Hindman and combine them into a single London board. Get rid of Maceo and call it Owensboro. Get rid of Smithland and call it Paducah. The only one they got right was Louisville. No doubt, by accident.

Examples of the boards, and their boundaries, not making sense with regard to the freight is having Walton, KY, where there is a popular Flying J, being geographically on the Paris, KY board, when Walton is in the shadows of Florence, KY and Cincinnati. You're sitting in Walton, #1 on the Paris board, and a load is coming out of Richmond, 85 miles away. #8 on the Paris board is sitting at the Love's in Richmond. Guess who gets the load? Board position doesn't mean much when the boards are not properly defined geographically based on where the freight comes out.

Another example is the super board of Brownsville, Laredo and Corpus. Freight comes out of all three of those locations, but those towns are too far apart to logically combine them into a single board. The whole purpose of the boards, and their redesign, is to place trucks where the freight is. Combining these three boards into one goes against that goal. The three towns combined may be averaging 5 loads a day, yet 4 of those may be in Laredo, and with the boards combined, you nor the computer will know if it's better to go on over to Brownsville or Laredo when delivering to, say, Kingsville, or is it better to stay up there near Corpus because there are no other trucks up there? If you make a mistake, it's a 200 mile mistake that costs you 3 or 4 hours. No exactly what I would call the most efficient way of positioning the fleet.

We have a Tallassee/Montgomery board. Well, no we don't, either. We have a Montgomery board that someone couldn't bear to remove Tallassee from the name because that particular location is geographically between two boards. It's a town of 4000 people and has no business in the name that defines a board location.

Same with Mount Hope, AL, which is a thriving metropolis that consists of the intersection of Country Road 23 and County Road 32. It's 20 miles from Decatur, so call it the Decatur board and be done with it. Sheesh. That way, people won't drive over to Mount Hope to find the only spot to layover is a cool spot in the middle of a corn field, and then have to drive to Decatur to get a load or Huntsville. Don't get me started on Huntsville. It doesn't exist anymore, and looking at the boards there's no way to tell what board you are on if you are in Huntsville. I guess you can go there and do a Macro 32 to find out.

Instead of Jackson, TN, we have the Yuma, TN board. Yuma is nothing more than the Parker's Crossroads Truck stop. That's it. No freight there. The freight on that board will come out of Jackson, Milan, Ripley, Paris and Henry. And Yuma is about as far away from those places as you can get and still be on that board. Yeah, that's efficient use of time and fuel.

I could go on, but I'm too busy laughing at the Barnhart, TX board, and the Spout Spring, VA board, and every single board in West Virginia. Whoever did West Virginia should be right proud how they got all the boards so evenly distributed around the state. That is, if that was their goal.

They could have given the task of the board redesign to the Driver Council, and locked them in a room until it was finished. The Council would have emerged the same day with a redesign that not only works, but one that is infinitely more efficient than what we have now.
 

davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
I am less than impressed with what I have seen so far.
Complicating the simple is an understatement.

I believe we will operate where we know the freight is, and pretty much ignore what they have at this point except for available trucks in the area.
 

ebsprintin

Veteran Expediter
Barnhart, TX

I just did the Barnhart, TX thing. It isn't even in the index of the motor carriers atlas. It's on the map, but no reference in the index, so try finding it on the map. Once I did find it on the map, I knew I wasn't going to Barnhart. I thought I'd scout out the board and headed to San Angelo and maybe catch some of the polygamy trial at the same time. Got my load before getting into town, so I still don't know anything about the board. Not a bad run either--Wingate, TX to N Dakota.

I'm getting more into the trolling business. If they don't pay for a move. I troll to a known freight location hoping to get something enroute. I'm trying a new strategy as well. I convince myself it's time to go home and head that way thinking about the clean shower and real bed waiting for me. Invariably a long load in the opposite direction comes in. Don't laugh, it really does work. If it doesn't work for you, you probably aren't thinking about the shower and bed hard enough.

eb
 

miguy1957

Expert Expediter
I am less than impressed with what I have seen so far.
Complicating the simple is an understatement.

I believe we will operate where we know the freight is, and pretty much ignore what they have at this point except for available trucks in the area.

Yea if you can find a place that is short on trucks, I just checked the michigan boards and the 4 boards that cover lower michigan and there are 56 vans waiting on 30 loads per day its like tis every where ive been in the last month, a min. of 2 day wait anywhere. Ive been at home all week not careing if i go out on a holiday week, BUT they changed the boards on what Mon- Tue and Ive only moved up to 2nd out on a 3 a day board and started at 5th, thats only 3 board positions in 5 days............ are they finding closer trucks?????????? and by passing me???????? 100% on time,70% accept, 80% inservice????? and ther are 8 trucks on the board im on Caro there are 30 trucks on the romulus board@ 16 loads /day the other boards are over 100 miles away and just as loaded down. Whats a man to do???
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