Turtle, True there is alot of room for improvement,however no company can position you to be on top of loads every time. New drivers will always have to learn where the freight comes from and position themselves to get the freight.
No one, least of all me, expects the company to position trucks on top of the freight every time, or even a high percentage of the time, as historical averages for a particular location can be relied upon only just so far with respect to future loads. But, let's get real with why these board redesigns were done in the first place - they were to better position the fleet to the freight,
especially for the new drivers.
Remember this classic?
"Empty Moves are accurate and provide the ***best*** option to get a quick load. The system updates by the second. This is a great improvement in our system and you ***cannot*** make a better decision based on your years of experience. Use it and see the difference."
It's been my experience with my experience that my experience gets me loaded quicker than these new, "accurate" Empty Moves will. So there.
The redesign was highly touted as being "highly accurate" and puts you in the best position for obtaining a quick load, i.e., near where the historical averages suggest future loads will likely come from, or, simply, put, "where the freight is".
After months of redesign and re-redesign, we are left with an abject failure of laughable proportions, and are right back to where we were before the redesign, namely with dispatch looking 50 miles out to see who is there. We are right back to "experience" in knowing where the freight is, as being the key to getting loads. And we're right back to the fleet positioning itself based on severely limited information, and in fact, wrong or misleading information, in light of the fact that the boards bear no semblance whatsoever of properly positioning the fleet in relation to the freight. The boards and their boundaries have nothing to do with where the freight is, and they give you no information whatsoever, none, of where on a particular board the freight does come from. The locations represented on the boards, some of them represented by "dots" alone and not even named, are meaningless unless you know the load history of those locations, but we can't get that information, and that's the very information we need as a fleet in order to self-position ourselves for freight.
That would be fine if the board boundaries were drawn to be roughly 50, 75, even 100 miles away from where the freight historically comes from. But these boards are all about carving up a state neatly by Zip Codes, without regard to freight. A victory for the IT Department, no doubt.
If all this wasn't bad enough, we get a truly silly, fleet-wide comment about the new boards like this:
"Please note that the map represents the Panther boards. The name of the board is not as significant as the locations represented in a board. When an EM is offered, it will typically be to the center of the board. Knowing the boundaries let’s you make an informed decision as to where on that board you would want to sit instead of moving to the center of the board."
I cannot begin to tell you how hard I laughed when I read that. Iced tea came flying out of my nose, and I was drinking a Diet Mountain Dew at the time.
In order to have decision be an informed one, actual, usable information must be available to be used in the decision making process. That's why it's called an
informed decision.
Knowing that the board name itself is relatively insignificant, and that the locations within the board is more important with respect to where the freight is, but the knowing the board boundaries do not tell you squat about where the freight comes from within a particular board, and thus, where to sit, we're left with trying to make an informed decision with no information with which to make it.
Some (most) of these boards are so large that it not only renders board positions meaningless for anyone more than 50 miles out from a particular shipper (even though they are on the same board), as dispatch will go 50 miles out just like they always have been, but when time and distance to the pickup is paramount, it only serves to promote the wasting of time and needless deadhead unless you are experienced enough to know where on a particular board to go and sit.
Not only that, but the whole purpose of the new boards was to better reposition the fleet in order to get more loads covered, and for us to be positioned to get our next load quicker, but unless you are experienced enough and familiar enough with an area, all it does is increase your deadhead to the pickup. And coupled with the policy of not providing bonuses to cover larger deadhead miles without first offering the load to any and all available trucks within 100 miles out (to see if some idio^^^^ er, ah, newb, will take it at base rate with even more unpaid deadhead), it results in more loads being turned down due to having to eat more deadhead, or at the very least, a lot more time wasted in trying to get the load covered.
Pretty soon you have a bunch of drivers all sitting on the same board, like 9 vans sitting in a 3-a-day location on a 6-a-day board, meanwhile 100 miles away there's a 3-a-day location on the same board, with no one there.
Calling this whole mess a tour de force in mediocrity would be a compliment.
We were recently in Memphis,tn (2hr) and got a call to pu in Laporte,Tx,on a sat morn for a non haz mat load to Montreal qu. Now that was a well pd dh of 630 mi for a 1900 mi run.Were there no teams closer in Tx? According to dispatch we were the closest team that would take the load.
That happens with Canadian loads sometimes, especially those going to Montreal.
"also got aload while in the UP of mi out of Newberry to Indy reg. freight, and a load Vancouver BC to JFK reg freight all within the last month. Panther could not have positioned us for any of those loads,in fact they had mt to other places on two of them and the loads came up while we were still in the areas,also have had 4 loads out of Fl inthe past 60 days."
Well, sure, on loads like that, where there is no load history to speak of for runs like that. That's not what the boards are designed to do. They are designed to better position the fleet where there is a known history, and thus a better likelihood, of new-future loads. I've had my share of odd loads, too, and I'm in a van.
"I believe you have to use your experience(only get that through time on the job) and the load boards in combination. Isn't that why EO forum tells new drivers to have money set back when you start to help while learning the bus?"
That's part of it. It's also because people new to the business will have unexpected expenses they can't plan for. But as for using your experience with the boards in combination, you have to have a lot of experience in order to even know how to use these boards, which is pretty sad considering the purpose of the new boards is to move you to where the current freight is, rather than relying on your past experience.
"I know you are very experienced and you would never go to a crossroads location, most would I imagine look at a map and use their common sense to position themselves."
Common sense is, by definition, a sense commonly known to many or all. Without experience, you have no common sense. When the QC offers you an empty move to a location you're never heard of, and to a board you're not familiar with, common sense is a non factor, especially if you're in the middle of nowhere without Internet access to view the maps to know where the boundaries are and which locations are within that board, nor does it tell you where on that board freight comes from.
"Tx only has two or three consistent freight produceing areas and Dallas has never been a good one for us(not quick enough anyway) although we have been preloaded many times from Dallas ,we head for laredo..."
Dallas has always been good for me. Other people will tell you that Laredo is one of the worst areas to get loaded out of. So much for common sense. What's a newbie to do, especially in an area like Texas where the Laredo/Corpus Christi/Brownsville board consists of seventeen thousand square miles in which to make a decision? Someone delivers to Kingsville, where we do get freight out of, and that puts them on that board. Do they stay put in Kingsville? The board boundaries and the locations represented on the map certainly do not give any indication of the load history of Kingsville. Do the deadhead the 45 miles back up to Corpus? Or the 125 miles down to Brownsville, only to find out they should have deadheaded the 125 miles to Laredo instead, which results in deadheading to Brownsville then to Laredo for a total deadhead of 325 miles. Then they get to Laredo and get a load offer from Laredo to Los Indios. lol
"last time we del in Tx we were in brownsville and were sent to Laredo for paint, counted 4 panther trucks from the road at the J none take haz mat? the TT at the pu for aload to louisville had dh to laredo from houston same deal. Problem may be some are to picky about what they will carry."
Some may be solo and can't take the load, some may be looking for a load to the midwest and the paint goes to South Carolina, some may not want to take HAZMAT, some may be out of hours, or out of service for any number of reasons. Some are too picky about what they take, some are just plain stoopid, some want Panther to pay extra for the risks of HAZMAT (like other carriers do. I do wonder of Panther isn't charging customers for HAZMAT and then not passing it along, as most customers are accustomed to HAZMAT surcharges, but that's probably for another posting
).
"also met a van at the walmart there that had turned down 2 loads to KC as it wasn't where they wanted to go, they had been there a week and weren't leaving until they got a load to ny state and were complaining about Panther not giving them a good load."
Good example of just plain stoopid. And cargo vans are just loaded with just plain stoopid. Can you imagine being a dispatcher and having to deal with these just plain stoopid morons every day all day, day after day after day? <shudder>
"Most don't really want to work and limit themselves ,then blame their carrier,instead of keeping loaded and moving, the real key to success in expediting ,don't you think?"
I agree completely, which is why it's even more important to get these boards redesigned and implemented so that
Just Plain Stoopid can utilize them to get loaded quicker.
