dealing with center managers

[BigBrownSanta]

- If you get caught padding miles you could lose your job

This will never happen if I can help it. If anything, I try to cut as many miles out of my day as possible. That may be another reason why my route won't plan well.

Dudbro may be misleading you just a little.... The allowances are not based on your performance....They are based on the area, type of buildings, density, walking distance, parking distance (and this is not based on how far you walked or parked but where the closest legal parking that was available), type of streets and traffic, etc....

The methods I'm talking about are like package selection, 10 seconds, but I do it in say 5 seconds, will I lose the other 5 seconds? ...or at a resi, I dr the package (2 seconds) on the porch rather than ring the bell and wait (28 seconds).

Where the driver gets confused is when the study is reviewed and the ie or mgmt person tells them where they lost time or gained time. That part of the study just shows what you did in comparison to the proper methods.

There was supposed to be a review? All I got was "You lost 15 minutes."

-Hopes this answers your questions...

I appreciate both yours and dudebro's responses. I still don't see how I'm consistently 1 to 1.5 hrs over everyday. 1

 

[dudebro]

- Mileage does not affect your TS. It does affect your planned day. If you get caught padding miles you could lose your job.

Dudbro may be misleading you just a little.... The allowances are not based on your performance....They are based on the area, type of buildings, density, walking distance, parking distance (and this is not based on how far you walked or parked but where the closest legal parking that was available), type of streets and traffic, etc....

I never said that. I may make a mistake somewhere, but I'm not trying to mislead anyone.

Where the driver gets confused is when the study is reviewed and the ie or mgmt person tells them where they lost time or gained time. That part of the study just shows what you did in comparison to the proper methods.

This is a good point. The observer notes what the driver DID do and what they feel SHOULD have happened, and reviews it with the center.

One other thing - If your area is way out of wack from what is considered normal or average for the area, a "variance" might be attached to that particular area.

Yes.

This is only an example to demonstrate how or why a variance might be installed. Variances can also be taken away ...another reason folks get upset!) You have a residential area - houses are 10 feet from the street and are perfect for DR maybe this is an island and no matter what time of day you go to the island you have an hour wait for the ferry. You would get a variance for that area based on the average wait time. 3 years from now they build a bridge and there is no more wait...the variance would be pulled and you would lose an hour for that area. I have seen stuff like that happen with highways going in or where speed limits and additional lanes were added to increase traffic caacity and improve the time.

This is also true. Variances are supposed to be audited annually and they will be removed if they no longer apply.

Hopes this answers your questions...

 

[dudebro]

This will never happen if I can help it. If anything, I try to cut as many miles out of my day as possible. That may be another reason why my route won't plan well.

What he means by padding miles, is the driver actually drives the shortest distance while on area, but when he/she starts his day, he puts 83004 in the start miles field instead of 83014, then inputs the actual finish miles. This will make it look like the driver goes 10 miles further than they really do each day, and increases the planned day.



The methods I'm talking about are like package selection, 10 seconds, but I do it in say 5 seconds, will I lose the other 5 seconds?
No.
...or at a resi, I dr the package (2 seconds) on the porch rather than ring the bell and wait (28 seconds).

You'll get the DR allowance instead of ring bell wait, unless it's a non-DR area. Then the observer will record a ring bell wait and note that YOU DR'd the package.



There was supposed to be a review? All I got was "You lost 15 minutes."
This is where my partners in management frustrate me. Someone should at least explain to you what happened, it's good training when done properly.



I appreciate both yours and dudebro's responses. I still don't see how I'm consistently 1 to 1.5 hrs over everyday. 1

Your on-car sup should be able to tell you, or enlist the help of the IE person to explain it to them if they can't. As you can see, there could be a million reasons. Only a trained individual with the original time study in front of them could tell you (and we've lost a lot of the original data where only the standard remains).

 

[upsgrunt]

I'm sure you ARE supposed to check your 1000 shelf because you're instructed to by your management team so you do it. They feel that the 5 or 10 minutes overallowed they incur is worth the double check on the preload.
But the standards allow only for reviewing your air stops in EDD and checking to see that you're not overdispatched. This is the standard we should be striving for, and on a few cars where there's strong trust between the drivers and a good seniority loader, it works this way. Most of my own building does what everyone else does, though, and sorts through the airs manually.
But consider some of your financial buildings. We have a couple in my building that get 150-200 airs alone. The driver goes out early to those buildings and it's a big issue on the preload when he finds a misloaded air in their mail room. He doesn't have time to do it any other way. If we can take 200 airs to a huge financial account without checking, why are we checking the usual 15-20 stops like this?
I know most drivers sort through airs prior to dispatch. But we SHOULD be able to trust the preload. This is my point about FIXING the problem upstream vs. putting a band-aid on it.

"Checking to see if we are over dispatched?" What happens when we are? Or should I say what is suppose to happen everyday because we are? Friday I had a paid day of 15 hours! When I said I had too much work before I left I got "sorry". Called to help preload at 4:30 ;preload from 5:00 to 8:30; Over 11 hour dispatch; and then forced to unload pickups on return to building at 7:15. All I got was "sorry"-I hope the fact that I was very illegal on clock wise will open someone's eyes. That is the only way it will get any attention-if someone gets in trouble. Driving for 1 year over 2 peak seasons does not make you a driver that compares to anything or makes you special. Try doing it EVERY DAY for more than 20.

 

[dudebro]

What can I tell you with that one? You're not supposed to be working 15 hour days, I never wrote that into any plan I ever made.

As for 20 years driving, well, thank you for your service, but are you telling me a guy with 19 years driving knows NOTHING? 18 years? 10? Where exactly does someone understand the job for you? One day longer than I did it? It's a dumb argument when it's used that way.

I drove long enough to understand the job pretty well. Senior drivers I've worked with may not agree with me sometimes, but they never tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. I'll never have driven as long as you, but I did it in all 4 seasons, and winter twice. I had to memorize the methods verbatim. I enjoyed it (most days), but I also wanted to continue to move on to more things.

 

[BigBrownSanta]

I guess I can chalk up part of the ride to the inexperience of the young observer. Mileage may have played a role since I had an OCA across town and broke off to get it to make the commit time. And the UPS Store had no real effect on the allowance.

The reason I was asking is because I recently had a 3 day production ride, and since then, my sups seem to have backed off a little. I was told I have good methods and I'm not dragging my feet all day. In fact, my stop count has even dropped a little.

As far as "flag" pickups, I stopped doing those the first time a pickup account called in on me and said I missed their pickup.

Thanks again dudebro and UPS Lifer. That's probably the straightest answers I've heard from management in a long while.

 

[upsgrunt]

Sorry if it seemed like I was belittling you, it never was intended. I respect your posts thus far and am just frustrated that what you say happens at your center never happens at ours. 131 stops per car including pickups? Not even close here- more like 180. Every car bricked out so that you must break trace just so you can use the back door. There is ab-so-freakin-lutey no way I could deliver everything on the 1000 and 2000 shelf through the front door. With the "texas" size smalls we have now and unlimited size and weight the back door is needed from the first stop on.

 

[dudebro]

No problem. Disagree with me, call me an a**hole if you want to, but I get defensive when I think someone tells me I don't understand the job, I work pretty hard at it. And I have nothing but the utmost respect for the drivers like you who can do it 20 years plus. If you're doing something wrong, you generally won't make it that far.
I don't even ask you to accept everything I tell you at face value. The 131 FSP stops per car was an actual average in my district right out of PKG, which is the planning tool we use to plan the dispatch. Any sup can look it up I think. Of course, that's an average of 960 drivers. Some of them are van routes with 25 stops. That means some other drivers have 180 like you describe.
If your car is bricked out each day and the best thing to do is to del. your rear door stop, then it should be time studied that way. If the driver consistently can't reach the shelves then either the dispatch should change or the route time study should reflect that.
And I understand being frustrated after a string of long hot days. That's why in the old days we used to be able to vent over a beer or two afterwards.

 

[Blue Balls]

In an earlier post driver said he had 50 stops in one of the thousand shelves...that must happen to everyone. My first day after making senority, I was put on a split car. 185 stops and I had never delivered any of this area I had 45 stops with the same pal number on the 3000 shelf. I dam near quit, I was so frustrated. Glad I didn't, I will never forget that day!! I was sent out blind on this and before disbatch I asked the other cover drivers if this was the normal amount of work on the car and it was alot more

 

[DS]

Hey dudebro,I see you are relativley new here at the browncafe`,Welcome,its not very often we get IE guys in here and its great to have you.You have already answered some questions I`ve always wondered about.No doubt you will get some flak from drivers that are genuinely overdispatched,and I respect you for taking the time to explain some of the issues that they have with their management teams.You seem very well spoken.Considering its ERI time,maybe you could suggest some constructive ideas we could add to the comments section at the end of the survey.It seems that nothing we (drivers) say ever seems to be addressed.

 

[UPS Lifer]

Dudebro,
I did not think that you intentionally tried to mislead anyone. I couldn't think of a better way to say it without taking a whole lot of time. Sorry for my miscommunication on that point. Please accept my apologies.
Lifer

 

[UPS Lifer]

The methods I'm talking about are like package selection, 10 seconds, but I do it in say 5 seconds, will I lose the other 5 seconds? ...or at a resi, I dr the package (2 seconds) on the porch rather than ring the bell and wait (28 seconds).

You do not lose any of the allowance if you "beat" the standard time. It will be reflected in the driver performance part of the TS review as a note as to how well you perform the methods. Remember it is the area that is being updated on a TS not the driver. A year from now there may be a different driver on the area. He/She should not be penalized because you can select a package faster than the average, etc, etc.

There was supposed to be a review? All I got was "You lost 15 minutes.". You should get with your manager and the TS person and have him review the whole study with you. I am sure that you want to see how you performed on the methods.



I appreciate both yours and dudebro's responses. I still don't see how I'm consistently 1 to 1.5 hrs over everyday. 1[/QUOTE]

Remember, perform the methods by the book and be responsive to your bosses and continue to perform at your best demonstrated performance safely, and you should never fear losing your job. Nobody can squeeze blood out of a turnip.

When I was a rookie, I tried to make a driver go at a quicker pace to get out of the hole and I was the one who got in trouble!!! So there are checks and balances!!!!

 

[JustTired]

dudebro

I've enjoyed your posts and they do shed some light on things.

My question is:

4 or 5 years ago the allowance changed. We were told that it was because the diad (and the time it saved us.....?) was never figured into the allowance.

How is a driver that was delivering 100 stops in 9 hours before the allowance change, expected to deliver 105-110 stops in the same amount of time or less after the change? The only thing that changed was the allowance.

Also.... If the change was indeed due to the diad, why did it take them 6 or more years to suddenly realize the diad had never been taken into account?

Basically, it took drivers who were running early or scratch and made them run late. It took drivers who were running late and made them run later.

My theory is that it had something to do with taking money away from the drivers on bonus. Don't mean this to sound bad, but prove me wrong.

 

[hdkappler]

about five years ago in peoria.il we had a center manager.that wanted to fire everyone.then got transfered to ky.almost every driver was happy he left.1 or 2 of them said they wish he would of dropped dead.he wasn't liked and was hated.

 

[dudebro]

The way the delivery allowance works is you get a per stop allowance (based on the delivery area number, like 5213) for the stop, with the biggest impact on this number being the walks observed in that area. That's why when drivers would tell me their allowance should change because it's 5 years old, I would ask facetiously if the houses got any further away from the street. I thought I was being witty but I stopped doing that because the guy who just did 160 stops while I sat in the A/C usually didn't think it was funny.
Then, added to this, is a per piece allowance which originally was .00512 hours / pkg, (meaning you could record about 200 packages per hour. NOT deliver them, just record them). This was the allowance back when everyone was on paper. Now consider the true pace of the change to where we are now. In UPS terms, it was glacial. First we got DIAD I, which really only did away with the paper. Back then, there were only tracking labels on airs and the occasional Groundtrac, so scanning wasn't so common. When we did scan, it was a 10 digit barcode where we still had to record the shipper number manually after we scanned the package.
Through the 90's, little by little packages with barcodes became more and more common, and the 1Z was introduced with the shipper number imbedded in the track number. It wasn't until '98 or so that I saw corp numbers showing that 98.5% of packages had readable barcodes on them. This process took 10 years. ALL this time, as 1Z labels became more and more common, we technically should have been sampling the volume and decreasing the per piece recording allowance little by little. But we didn't. Finally, we found ourselves in 2003 or 2004 with 90% or better of our packages having 1Z's that require no shipper number recording, just the OCA packages still have the 10-digit numbers. And recording the address now usually just entails the street number and the first four letters of the street name more than 99% of the time.

In a strictly engineering sense, we've come a long way in package recording from the paper sheets, but had never addressed the per piece allowance. The new allowance of .00344 hours / pc (I might be off by a couple of 10-thousandths, I don't have CRS at home) now means the average driver should be able to record about 280 packages per hour. The average driver with ~280 delivery packages loses about 25 minutes of planned time all in one change, but really, the allowance should have been changing little by little all along. The fictional driver with 100 stops, should have increased to 101 2 years later, then 104 3 years after that, etc. based on the delivery allowance alone. But as I said, this change was very slow. How much did all the other factors affect the driving job in the meantime? The increase in QVC and HSN as internet shopping exploded. Those enormous Dell packages in the late 90's. Against this backdrop the slow, steady change in average delivery recording time would have hardly been noticeable, like a tide rising, but it was there.
As engineers, it's our job to study the activity and come up with the right number. In a strict engineering sense, the right number is the right number no matter what the consequences of that adjustment are. Our function as engineers is to have the correct standard, no more, no less.

JustTired, I can't promise you that when that number was discussed in the hallowed halls of Glenlake Pkwy, some finance guy didn't do the Mr. Burns finger thing in his office and figure out we'd save cost in bonus centers. I'm sure they did. That's THEIR job.
But the allowance is based on actual drivers studied recording actual packages in thousands of instances and was changed based on the results of that study, which was honest. That's a whole lot different then a bunch of guys getting together in a smoke filled backroom, plotting to reduce that number by x percent, and then inventing the justification. I can't prove it, but I don't believe we do things that way. I understand how it can feel that way, even, but that's just not the way I believe it is.

 

[toonertoo]

Hi dudebro and welcome. Sorry I missed your arrival.


One Question, I swore I would never ask again. Does size matter. If a route was studied in 1988 in a p6 and is now in a 1000, is there time allowed in that for the extra walk. I have actually given up on trying to make time, as I used to be a scratch person, and since the time allowance loss I am 1 to 1.8 late daily, for my ownself I wonder why. From 85 max, to 105 min, some days 130. and one day under with 128. I know a little like cods, # of pkgs, pu and del, but it makes no sense why now I have to work til 7pm or later or it isnt 8 hrs on paper. I didnt lose 6 seconds per pkg, I lost an hour. And nothing changed but the numbers. We are not yet on PAS, I can only pray we never do, since no one at our bldg has a clue anymore of what to move where. Well I shouldnt say that, the drivers do, the management doesnt, and are too proud to ask for help. Which they would get honest answers, because our center drivers still cares about service.

 

[upsgrunt]

Hey Dudebro, I have another question

When you talk about stops per car and hitting the magic average of 131, which includes pickups, are CPU runs to be included in that average? We have about 3 CPU routes that deliver 3 or 4 stops and 800 pieces out of a feeder and we are told they have to be averaged in with package car drivers stops per car. It doesn't take a genius to see that those 3 routes with 3 stops really drag down the average and of course the rest of us have to have really big numbers to bring the center numbers up. Is this right, or is the manager just using the excuse to "load us up"?

 

[dudebro]

Tooner, thanks.
I wish I could help you from 400 mi away but there are just too many possible variables. The size of the package car wouldn't matter much because you're supposed to be working out of your 30 inch selection area a majority of the time, so the number of trips into the vehicle to push the packages forward would amount to a few minutes at most. It WOULD change, but not much. You did lose about 0.5 hours on the package allowance, but you should have been starting to beat the old recording allowance as the packages got smarter (technically). Have send agains increased a lot? Indirects? Was there a mail room on your route that isn't there anymore? Some other variance? Did you stop picking up 400 smalls from an account? Do you still walk at a pace of 2 30 inch paces per second? (a mile every 20 minutes? Brisk, I know) Without knowing your center I just can't pinpoint it. Was the route recently time studied and do you still see the observer to ask him? It may truly need a restudy. The good observers can pinpoint where in the package cycle you beat the allowance and where you don't, and this could help you identify any methods you've gotten away from, if any. I wish I could help better than a few shots in the dark, but I hope I helped a little...

 

[705red]

In your world, if everyone drove for 10 years before they could say a word to anyone, we wouldn't really have enough management. I respect the seniority and the time you put in that puts wear and tear on your body, but I drove for over a year through 2 peak seasons, and I did run scratch more often than not on a route or two once I knew them, not to mention driving school, pkg ops sup training, IE training, and time study training, so I think I understand the job as well as anyone. 30 stops on each 1000 shelf doesn't happen too often. This would be a 240 stop dispatch not including pickups. My district ran 131.2 stops per metro driver LAST WEEK, and that includes the pickups, so the deliveries are less than half that. I look down a lot of cars in the morning and they're not all bricked out like that. So yea, you could walk down the line and find me probably one car out of 50 like that, but most of them aren't. And they CAN, 95% of the time or better, be loaded in stop for stop order. Just because we put PALs on packages, things don't get better until we stop allowing the preloader to fling the package with HIN 1718 on it in the general vicinity of shelf 1000 from outside the car.

You drove for 1 year so you think you know the job as good as anyone? Come on! I still encounter things at least on a weekly basis that i have never seen before and i have over 10 years in. Hey i really dont care about the bonus, i would rather see the bonus system eliminated all together, but i do understand that others depend on it so i will leave it at that. So you have 1 year driving and several brain washing classes from ups and thats how we get these almost impossible numbers? Now i can see the formula thats been breaking it off im my rear for some time now. Thanks for the time study explanation.

 

[705red]

Hi dudebro and welcome. Sorry I missed your arrival.


One Question, I swore I would never ask again. Does size matter. If a route was studied in 1988 in a p6 and is now in a 1000, is there time allowed in that for the extra walk. I have actually given up on trying to make time, as I used to be a scratch person, and since the time allowance loss I am 1 to 1.8 late daily, for my ownself I wonder why. From 85 max, to 105 min, some days 130. and one day under with 128. I know a little like cods, # of pkgs, pu and del, but it makes no sense why now I have to work til 7pm or later or it isnt 8 hrs on paper. I didnt lose 6 seconds per pkg, I lost an hour. And nothing changed but the numbers. We are not yet on PAS, I can only pray we never do, since no one at our bldg has a clue anymore of what to move where. Well I shouldnt say that, the drivers do, the management doesnt, and are too proud to ask for help. Which they would get honest answers, because our center drivers still cares about service.

Tonner, exactly how many times have you asked that question?