Big news next week?
- Thread starter MAKAVELI
- Start date
hypo hanna
Well-Known Member
Nothing on my grapevine...
SmithBarney
Well-Known Member
Going to announce, best SFA results EVER!
RTURNSONLY
Well-Known Member
Appointment time! Dano said it first.
MAKAVELI
Well-Known Member
I don't know why that would be held a secret, especially to our sm. He seemed pretty nervous when talking about it. But then again, he has been nervous the past few years.
The secret is , he is coming out of the closet in a big purple ball gown!
Fred said recently that they were going to speed up efforts to utilize other opco's. Possibly something along those lines?
RTURNSONLY
Well-Known Member
Shame on you if you believe management when they tell us "they don't know anything" coming down the pipe. You should know better by now.
Glorifiedpackmule
Well-Known Member
Couriers will now be required to lease their respective FDX vehicles from FedEx, along with all maintence and fuel cost. Couriers will be paid a daily flat rate of 100 dollars. This will simply pay scales and cut down on any confusion caused by overtime. This will also eliminate any confusion caused by the 35 hour rule which will cease to exsist after May 1st.
Ricochet1a
Well-Known Member
Nothing.
Maybe all the talk about delivery appointments will finally be publicly announced. The software the Couriers use was updated earlier in the year to handle delivery appointments. It is supposedly already worked into DRA - the routing report will give Couriers the 'regular' stop ordering, then any delivery appointments will be worked into the stop ordering (supposedly in a 'smooth fashion').
Lol, well this should be interesting. We dont have DRA at my station and ROADS still doesnt work correctly.
MAKAVELI
Well-Known Member
Oh I know he wasn't telling us everything he knows. This was mentioned in his big rtb speech and how it was the " hot topic" right now.
Ricochet1a
Well-Known Member
You'll see it most likely before the end of the year, possibly as late as early next year.
This is the one thing about DRA that the Couriers that are using it don't understand. Station management is feeding the line about it 'making the Courier more productive' (its the current talking point).
That is complete smoke screen, bull sheet and whatever else you want to call it.
An experienced Courier that has been on the same route for at least 5 years, will handily beat what a computer program can do hands down. The engineers and station level management KNOWS THAT.
DRA is all about making that experienced Courier redundant.
DRA at best will achieve about 85-90% of what an experienced Courier can achieve. The goal ISN'T to make the Courier more time efficient, it is to make the Courier more COST efficient.
By making the need for an experienced Courier redundant, someone making significantly less can step in, get acceptable productivity and lower the 'delivery cost per package' by using computerized route planning.
This is why time is running out for you guys. I've seen daily routing reports for DRA. Many of them have been optimized to the point where the program can predict on road times to within 10 minutes for a full time route. As long as correct leave building times are entered, the report will kick out a detailed listing of the sequential stop order, the number of docs and boxes to be delivered at that stop, the customer's name and phone number for the stop, time spent getting to the stop from the previous, and anticipated RTB.
It clearly doesn't take into account the 'unexpected', but they will never be able to get a computer program to do that.
When engineering takes the time to work on getting the software to work as a Courier actually works, the program works remarkably well. Given the delivery manifests generated, I could easily step back into an Express truck after almost 3 years out, and get off volume on one of these routes and achieve acceptable productivity - WITHOUT HAVING RUN THE ROUTE PREVIOUSLY.
DontThrowPackages
Well-Known Member
So if we run the rte as directed by DRA, we will never have lates? Will it expect us to finish last p1 at 1029? Just curious about those kinds of things. An everyday p1 LTR stop all of a sudden gets 5, 90lbs boxes. Will DRA factor in loading up the dolly and wheeling that freight to the customer? What about the bottom rte? If the Apex and middle rtes fill up, what about the last rte if everyday he only gets 4 hours of work?
Ricochet1a
Well-Known Member
Nope. That is why stations that are experiencing habitual lates while using DRA will be adding part-time AM Couriers, to give more personnel to throw into the mix. I never said DRA is 'common sense' (it isn't right now). It is merely something that Express has literally bet the future of DGO upon, in order to make the experienced Courier redundant.
In theory, YES. As long as the correct leave building time is entered into the report, the correct stem time is entered, and time between stops is correctly calculated by the program, there shouldn't be any lates. Now... right now, they are having lates galore. That's why the extra Couriers.
The one thing that I haven't gotten an answer to, is where are all these extra vehicles going to be parked, in stations that are currently optimized for the current fleet of vehicles. Are they going to delay the retirement of W700s and have extra vehicles for these extra Couriers to use?
Good question. To be honest, I don't know if the program takes into consideration the DIM weight of a stop's packages (the computer should have access to that data) and adds time in 'handling' that volume at a stop. I'm thinking what is happening, is that the program creates a history of time spent at a stop (ACME Computer Parts), and then allocates time to that stop based on delivery history (throws in 4 extra minutes). Where the real "whammy" will occur, is at stops that are infrequent which have a large volume being delivered to them. This is the short coming of ANY computer program.
I knew when I ran delivery routes, I could spend 10 minutes AT a stop, waiting to get someone to sign - then at others, I'd have a signature before I dumped the contents of the hand truck. I'm thinking DRA will look at stop history, and add time accordingly.
DRA frankly isn't concerned about getting Couriers 'their hours'. DRA is ONLY concerned with routing the delivery of packages. This is yet another excellent observation, and one most Couriers are oblivious to. I know that stations that are running DRA are having Couriers not working up to their minimums (getting less than 35 a week for FT), while other Couriers accumulate OT on a regular basis. It is playing hell with the OT reports by station management (they are left having to explain why they are running up OT while paying other Couriers minimums). Standard response is, "We're running DRA as directed".
Station management knows it is a flustercluck right now - but they also know they have to implement it or they are out the door.
Thus the insanity going on within stations right now.
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