This has not happened at my center yet, so I'm guessing that it is a regional thing.
But in any case, as far as the floor positions being removed from the PAL labels, I do not see an issue... assuming you have a loader who knows what he/she is doing.
I know my trucks fairly well. I load two routes, three trucks, one of which is a buff. The buff and the larger sized car is one route, which are mostly businesses. The third is a mix of business and residential, and is a small car (smallest?). I don't know the model numbers. This one is the trickiest to load, as it's all about space management. The only floor positions I have on this one are Flr 1, 2, 3, RDL and RDR. Aside from 1 and 2, these don't mean anything to me - they go where they need to go. If these floor positions were removed from PALs, assuming the stop had fewer than whatever the max was, it wouldn't affect my load at all.
I don't care if one stop has 3 pieces, if they're huge, they're going on the floor. Big crap goes on the floor, small crap goes on the shelf. If there's WAY too much big crap for one stop, it gets stacked out and will be center loaded later.
My buff, obviously, is loaded by stop. It has maybe 15 stops, and each one goes in specific areas. As far as the other two cars go, my drivers have not really given me any specific instruction on where to put certain stops. While this is annoying at times, it leaves the decisions up to me, and I have only received compliments for my loads. Some of which have come from drivers that normally do not run that route.
If this lovely technique came to my center, and our pt sup brought it to our attention, I would continue to do things the way I did before, because there's no other way to do it correctly until someone shows me otherwise.
This reminds me of something from several weeks ago. Irreg drivers started putting ALL pieces on the bottom belt. I caught one, and I told him those were for the first area. My sup was upstairs doing observations. The irreg driver told my sup that they've been told to put ALL irregs on the belt, that they weren't allowed to leave anything at the front of the belt, unless it didn't fit. My sup investigated this further and told me that someone in an office somewhere made this decision. It didn't last very long. I do not need crap for my first truck on the belt. In fact, I don't need crap for ANY of my trucks on the belt. If I'm in the buff putting packages up, I'm not going to hop in and out fetching irregs like a
monkey.
Sorry for the novel, I like to rant when I’m drunk.
Canadian Club 10yr whiskey tonight. It’s cheap, but I’m a part timer and we get paid in bits of string.