No more bike helpers this year....

[soberups]

...Thank God!!

We have been saddled with bike helpers every peak since 2008 and in almost every instance it takes far more miles and wasted time to get the packages out to them than they are able to save.

Bike helpers might be a good idea in some areas...like tight retirement communities in Florida where there aren't any hills and it doesn't snow or freeze...but they have been a terrible idea here in the Pacific Northwest.

For several years, I was forced to tow a pup trailer with a bike and 40 stops in it out to a delivery area for a bike helper to deliver. He would spend half a day delivering stops that the 2 of us together on car could have banged off in half an hour or so---which was the same amount of time I was losing in the AM and PM having to screw around with the pup trailer. And in return for saving approximately 1 mile of delivery driving, I would be forced at the end of the day to double back over 10 miles just to retrieve the pup trailer, and half the time there would be irregs in it that the helper couldn't deal with on the bike so I would have to deliver them on my way in with the pup trailer in tow. On more than one occasion I was forced to break off and go pick up the bike and take it to a local bike shop for repair when it got a flat tire or broke a chain. The entire scheme was one gigantic waste of time, effort and miles. Too bad it took UPS 6 years to figure out what was obvious to us on day one.

 

[MechLift]

Maybe supervisors should touch a package on a bike now and then

 

[Foamer Pyle]

I work in Florida, and we use golf carts. Ups rents a big storage container, and then pays some golf community money to allow ups to store the container in their parking lot. So they rent a container, pay off golf community for allowing the container, rent a golf cart, and a little pull behind cart, and then pay someone to deliver the $h*t. Last year, on my area, three golf carts crapped the bed, and two of the pull behind carts lost wheels. I don't see the savings here, especially with the mis-deliveries and packages that fall off the cart and wind up in the street or in someone's yard. Total Farce!

 

[soberups]

Maybe supervisors should touch a package on a bike now and then

Our local supervisors trained the bike helpers and rode along with them. They were well aware of how stupid the idea was, but they were powerless to stop the insanity because IE demanded that the bike helpers be used whether it made any sense to do so or not. Last year, out of desperation they even resorted to paying regular helpers a bike wage so that they would show up on the requisite report and fool IE into thinking that they were being used.... even though the bicycles themselves spent most of peak buried in a POD with 2 flat tires beneath a mountain of undelivered stops.

 

[3 done 3 to go]

Bike?? Half of the helpers (in the northeast) almost need to be waken up at every stop. More then half quit in first few days. I also let them pick my helper. That way it isn't my fault if their numbers don't work for them

 

[Wally]

Somehow, I think the same team that came up with ORION, came up with this very, very, stupid idea. The last thing they would ever do is talk to a seasoned driver to get their input.