The company will save 3drivers X 45-60 minutes X 2 (to/from minutes) daily to start off with. Include 2 X less the mileage for the three PCs(which saves on fuel costs). The ability to have three drivers stay on the clock later in the day, before OT kicks in. Those are the pretty much standard savings. Plus if that isn't enough, the numbers can be skewed to make them appear better.
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Thats how IE sees it on paper.
Unfortunately, it doesnt work that way in real life.
The satellite drivers in my center have not had a significant decrease in miles or hours. True, they arent driving all the way out to their delivery area and back from the building; but at least half the time they cant get all their deliveries done by the time the feed driver has to pull the trailer back. So they break trace, go back to the trailer to unload their pickup volume, then go back out to complete their deliveries. Total miles are still less, but not by as much as IE fantasized about when they came up with the idea in the first place.
There are other issues. For instance, the feed driver must lug the trailer out to the sat center before he can do anything else. This usually means that he cannot make service on all of his NDA, so it gets cut to another driver in the loop who winds up driving more miles as a result. Also, the feed driver might be 15 or 20 miles away from where he left the trailer once he is done with his own route, but he must double all the way back to retrieve the trailer instead of just heading in.
The bottom line is that most of the decrease in miles for the sat routes are offset by an increase in the other routes in the loop.
Another money loser is that you still have to pay preload to load the trailer, then pay the sat drivers to rehandle the same packages over again when they load their own cars. Same thing for the pickup volume, you are handling every package twice instead of once.
There is also the expense of renting a facility; obtaining additional pup trailers; equipping additional cars with hitches (about $850 installed); the additional $.25 per hour trailer pay; shuttling vehicles back and forth from the home center for repairs and PMI's that the local shop cant do; providing additonal DIADS and cellphones; and dealing with containment issues when both the trailer and feed car are blown out, requiring yet another vehicle to get in on the fun.
I am sure that sat centers are a good idea in some areas. Here, however, it was a case of IE deciding that they were going to implement it no matter what, and if it didnt work they would just pretend that it worked.