Mrbill,
It will be as good or as bad as you and your center team make it. With luck you have some on road supervisors (or at least one) that has run the routes in the center. You will be taking the same corrections to your on road team and dispatch supervisor 2, 3 or 10 times, STAY CALM AND DONT GIVE UP. It is a new system for everyone and EVERYONE involved will make mistakes. I know there are 5% of drivers out there that threw their hands up from day one (the same ones that never stalled their car when they learned to drive a stick shift or NEVER made a mistake on road).
It is INCREDIBLE and scary what the smallest error in the system can create. It can get ugly in a hurry and there will be days when it does. One positive, whoever handed your DOL to you at least received word of the importance of driver involvement. Not getting driver involvement was a mistake made around the country and set the whole thing back at LEAST a year.
One last note, if you get overruled on how to route a section of your route, PLEASE do not give in without a "fight". If you are sure you can save miles or time by doing it a certain way take your idea to the dispatch sup, on road team, center manager, division manager, whoever will listen!!!!!
Nobody knows your route better than you and noone knows your customers better than you. Be open to the new ideas but dont trust the system will know the above better than you. And i beg you, dont throw your arms up in frustration and give up. Someone, somewhere had to teach you along the way and hopefully they didnt do that. Union, management, part time, full time, none of those BS classifications matter, what matters is making the system work to fend off our NON UNION competition. That way all of the over priced management can continue to fight over paid drivers internally and we will all continue on LOL