Fuelish stupidity

[soberups]

The new "flavor of the week" in my building is to reduce PM time by only allowing drivers to refuel their package cars every other day.

Its a great theory from behind a desk in management world...but in the real world its a stupid idea that saves no time and creates the very real risk of running out of gas in the middle of a delivery route.

My PM routine is to enter the gate and drive over to one of the 3 fuel pumps we have. I do my post-trip, empty my trash can, and put in 9 or 10 gallons of fuel. If there is a line of cars at the pumps, I will wait until the following day to refuel. Its called common sense and I have been using it successfully for 22 yrs now.

Common sense and logic no longer apply; I must instead placate some idiot from IE by not putting in any fuel. We must spoon-feed this idiot the number he wants to look at and only refuel every other day. There are no exceptions.

Now, I might roll in low on fuel and be forced to wait in a long line; a line that could have been avoided had I topped off on the previous day when there was no line. Also...the idiot who created this mandate apparently failed to comprehend the simple fact that it takes twice as long to pump 20 gallons of fuel as it does to pump 10, negating any time savings that might have been realized.

More critically...this stupidity potentially threatens tens of thousands of dollars in Next Day Air and International revenue.

I pull a pup trailer out to my area and drop it at a location once it is empty; the drivers in my loop then use this trailer as a drop point for our NDA and international volume. By 4:15 there will often be 200-300 pieces of air volume that needs to get back to the building to be loaded onto the airport feeder.

On 3 occasions in the last 15 yrs there has been a traffic accident which closes the main highway and makes it impossible to get this volume back to the building on time. When this happens....as a last resort I have hooked this trailer up myself and taken it on a 95 mile roundtrip via back roads to the airport to be unloaded.

If I dont get this trailer to the airport on time, every bit of that volume becomes a service failure for which we owe the customer a refund.

Is it logical to dispatch a route that must potentially make it to the airport...and then intentionally require that route to leave the building low on fuel?

The time I would spend going to a public station and buying fuel on my dime...assuming I would even be willing to do so in the first place...might very well make the difference as to whether or not those 300 pieces of NDA and International volume make service or not.

I have pointed this out to my management team...but my concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The reality no longer matters;I must work as instructed; I must placate the idiot and spoon-feed him his number with utterly no regard for logic or common sense. If I fail to do so I will show up on a report.

What really frightens me...is that the idiot who madated this is still being paid a salary by the company I work for.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

I would agree with you if the routes in question required daily refueling but if you are simply refueling daily as this is what you have done for 22 yrs and you could safely go 2 days on a full tank then I would politely disagree with you.

Has any thought been given to alternate fueling days? In other words, half the cars fuel on odd days and the other half on even days. This would only be for those routes which do not require daily refueling and would lessen the congestion at the fuel pumps and would cut the cumulative fueling time in half.

This is not an issue in our center as our facility was built without fuel pumps so we have credit cards and fuel off site. A lot of the drivers will combine this with their evening break and it is not uncommon to see 6-7 pkg cars sitting at the Mobil station on my way home at night.

I have to say I agree with IE on this one for those routes that do not require daily refueling.

 

[brownrodster]

We have fuel pumps on site. And at my center we have several part time employees who do nothing but fuel trucks and park them on the building so they get unloaded.

I would simply work as instructed and laugh if the situation arose where I ran out of fuel and caused a multitude of service failures. I would also refuse to spend my own money on fuel for any UPS vehicle.

 

[UPSGUY72]

Don't worry they will figure it out when someone runs out of gas one day. We have cars in our building that when they down to 1/4 of a tank they have fuel pick-up problems.

Some routes might need to be filled up daily and some not but I agree that it pretty stupid to have set dates you can fill your car up on espically in the winter. More fuel more weight.

 

[Big Babooba]

The new "flavor of the week" in my building is to reduce PM time by only allowing drivers to refuel their package cars every other day.

Its a great theory from behind a desk in management world...but in the real world its a stupid idea that saves no time and creates the very real risk of running out of gas in the middle of a delivery route.

My PM routine is to enter the gate and drive over to one of the 3 fuel pumps we have. I do my post-trip, empty my trash can, and put in 9 or 10 gallons of fuel. If there is a line of cars at the pumps, I will wait until the following day to refuel. Its called common sense and I have been using it successfully for 22 yrs now.

Common sense and logic no longer apply; I must instead placate some idiot from IE by not putting in any fuel. We must spoon-feed this idiot the number he wants to look at and only refuel every other day. There are no exceptions.

Now, I might roll in low on fuel and be forced to wait in a long line; a line that could have been avoided had I topped off on the previous day when there was no line. Also...the idiot who created this mandate apparently failed to comprehend the simple fact that it takes twice as long to pump 20 gallons of fuel as it does to pump 10, negating any time savings that might have been realized.

You are so wrong! You forget that you only have to turn the pump on and off, remove / replace the fuel cap and dispense / hang up the nozzle only once every 2 days. My guess is that you are saving 5 - 6 seconds by fueling every other day. In 2 years you will have saved an hour. They give out warning letters here for running out of fuel. Vehicles tend to get worse fuel mileage in cold weather. My record is 34 gallons in a 35 gallon tank in the summer (fueling every other day). It could be a profitable winter at the warning letter factory.

 

[wo88upsman]

Don't really understand your point here. As long as your were doing it and taking the chance it was fine but now somebody tells you to do what you have been doing anyway you get mad. Sounds like you are getting mad for no reason

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Don't really understand your point here. As long as your were doing it and taking the chance it was fine but now somebody tells you to do what you have been doing anyway you get mad. Sounds like you are getting mad for no reason

Do yourself (and us) a favor and re-read what he wrote.

 

[959Nanook]

We have fuel cards as well so we fuel up on road as needed. The last Flavor of the Month for us was "Don't spend more than $100.00 on fuel". So we got told to fuel more often, not less often, so as to ensure we don't spend more than $100.00 on fuel per refuel.

 

[over9five]

I don't see what the problem is either. What are you so worked up over? Work as directed. You run out of fuel, you get paid to sit there waiting for the mechanic with a gas can. Sounds like a win situation to me.

It's not your company. You're just a tool. You're not expected to make these big important decisions.

 

[soberups]

I don't see what the problem is either. What are you so worked up over? Work as directed. You run out of fuel, you get paid to sit there waiting for the mechanic with a gas can. Sounds like a win situation to me.

It's not your company. You're just a tool. You're not expected to make these big important decisions.

You are correct.

Unfortunately, I still give a damn. I know I shouldnt; Lord knows the company is doing everything it can to grind that out of me; but for the time being at least I still have this compulsion to do the right thing and make the best and most profitable decisions that I can for the company.

 

[soberups]

I would simply work as instructed and laugh if the situation arose where I ran out of fuel and caused a multitude of service failures. I would also refuse to spend my own money on fuel for any UPS vehicle.

Bear in mind that the service failures we are talking about are Next Day Air packages. Medication...birthday gifts...title documents....even though it really isnt "my problem" it just sickens me to think of all that stuff being left behind due to such a monumentally stupid rule.

As far as spending my own money on fuel I have had to do that on a handful of occasions; at my building all you have to do is take the reciept to the Customer Counter when you get back and you will be reimbursed with no hassle.

 

[tieguy]

wow lot of angst over this one sober.

 

[brownmonster]

I drive a diesel and for 13 years I fueled it on road with a gas card because we only had gasoline at our building. This year we switched to diesel at our building. I still fuel it on road. My last stop is a pack n ship located at a mini-mart. I'm there anyway, might as well fuel up.

 

[soberups]

wow lot of angst over this one sober.

It only bothers me because I care.

I guess it would be easier if I could shut my brain off and be a destructively obedient union goon who didnt give a damn.

This whole thing is symptomatic of a larger problem, which is that the front-line management people are no longer allowed to make smart decisions or reasonable exceptions when warranted, instead they must mindlessly and idiotically generate whichever statistic is demanded of them whether it makes any sense to do so or not.

I have 7 1/2 yrs to go until retirement and I am afraid that with this type of mentality in charge we wont make it that long.

 

[cachsux]

At our bldg we are not allowed to fuel our own equipment now. So we are paid to sit in line (longest so far 1:15) and wait on the designated fueler. Why? Because a couple of drivers,some hourly some long haul,decided that it was a way to pad their OT. Instead of going down and catching these individuals it`s much cheaper (sarcasm,actually expensive) for all of us to sit.
What ever they want us to do,we`ll do.

 

[Babagounj]

that ie guy must hate me.
Every time I use a P3 I fill it up ( tank holds 35 gals ) ; (1) I don't know where they'll send me on an "errand" , (2) I'm always thinking about the next driver who will be using the P3 , usually a early am driver.

 

[over9five]

You are correct.

Unfortunately, I still give a damn. I know I shouldnt; Lord knows the company is doing everything it can to grind that out of me; but for the time being at least I still have this compulsion to do the right thing and make the best and most profitable decisions that I can for the company.

You are still a professional driver. Something we all have to get past....

 

[User Name]

I find this funny, because I can't remember the last time that I drove a Gas pkg car that the fuel gage worked....lol

 

[pickup]

sober, just think about this, that is 9 gallons of fuel (what does a gallon weigh? ) that the truck is not transporting the next day. That is less fuel consumed as a result of less weight on the truck. Multiply this effect by all the trucks in the fleet and the earth is greener

 

[Pickup's greatest fan]

sober, just think about this, that is 9 gallons of fuel (what does a gallon weigh? ) that the truck is not transporting the next day. That is less fuel consumed as a result of less weight on the truck. Multiply this effect by all the trucks in the fleet and the earth is greener

Isn't he just wonderful?