Hey trplnkl, it's me again. I see that I have ruffled your feathers this morning.
Actually you did not ruffle my feathers at all, I was just letting you know how I read your posts. Trust me, if you ever ruffle my feathers, you will see the difference.lol
I realize that volume is down at UPS, as it is with all of our competitors. DHL closed their doors and FedEx has parked some aircrafts. In fact, UPS now has some DHL employee's working with us at UPS, bringing some their DHL account with them. They refer to these accounts as Reseller. Have you heard of them?
Yes I have heard of the resellers and think this is a good idea. Leads that the drivers did not have to take time from their work to acquire.
Yes, FedEx volume is down, so in my opinion they will be desperate to find the DHL volume that is still out there. They will also need to place themselves in a position where they can rebound once the economy mess is over with.
True, just as we need to.
As of Friday, UPS stock is higher than FedEx and that has not been the case for quite a long while. It would be nice if UPS stock could remained higher than FedEx, don't you think?
OF course I think that would be nice and I hope it does. I think I read on here that the day our stock went higher than BrandEx was the first time since we went public.
I also heard rumor that I haven't been able to confirm yet; that when FedEx parked their aircraft they hired UPS to carry the packages. That makes a win, win for both UPS and FedEx. FedEx cuts cost by parking their aircraft and UPS can fill their aircraft up.
Although I believe it is important to keep our planes full, it seems a little counter productive in the long run to do anything to help BrandEx weather this storm. (one a brief side note, I wonder hoe FedEx likes getting their volume that we are flying for them so late in the day?)
Perhaps you haven't heard or haven't read the post on BC about drivers who are working in hubs because of declined volume. This morning I also read a few hubs have actually lost some drivers. Perhaps your district is not being impacted by downsizes but my district is being affected by the impact of another district and it scares the hell out of me. It should scare you too!
I am well aware that people are being laid off across the country in all areas of commerce and I hate it, but to stay out a political discussion that would reap zero benefits I'll just let it go without further comment. It doesn't scare me, worry a bit...yeah it does. BTW, IMO, the downsizes and consolidations within UPS were only facilitated by the economic crunch. I believe they were in planning way before things got so bad.
I realize the SLIM lead program is not perfect. I was hoping to hear some really good valid points of what makes the lead program so disliked by the drivers. Other than blaming BD for being lazy. I am more than willing to stand and argue the valid points in behalf of the drivers to my management team, that drivers claim won't listen to anything. Will it work? I don't know, but to me, it's worth a try.
If you can filter through all the anger and frustration of many of the driver's posts on the (several) threads discussing this you will find the answers you seek. It's pretty simple really. almost too simple. A driver that is doing physical labor for 9-10-11 hours a day, doesn't get home before their children go to bed and goes to work the next day to be yelled at and berated by someone that couldn't do a bit better and then told he/she has to turn in a sale lead, NO EXCEPTIONS/ NO EXCUSES is not going to be happy. Then when they do turn in a sales lead only to find out that no on has been there to SEE the prospective customer, the anger is multiplied exponentially.
The blaming BD for being lazy probably comes from the people that see their BD people walking around the building seeminly doing nothing. There have been a few examples of other excessive indolent activaties. Only the posters of such know the truth of claimed situations. I have no reason to doubt them.
I don't agree with every decision made in the corporate ivory tower. I also remember when all managers and supervisors had to drive before joining the management team. I even agree with you that it should still be just that way, but it's not. We have to conform the best we can with the decisions made by corporate and by the union. At least you guys do have representation which is more than I can say about my position as a non-union, non-management employee. Don't be bitter at BD and the sales reps because of decisions made by IE, the corporate ivory tower, or Tech Support who installs our CTP and who can also train customers to use worldship. BD works just as hard as drivers and gets dumped on more than any other department in UPS. Now, I'm not saying BD is a perfect environment, but neither are delivery and operations or any other department for that matter. I'm just saying as a company we will do better in the way of service if we drop some of our barriers and try to communicate with each other.
There is really nothing I realy disagree with in this paragraph excet for some of your conclusions. I don't think many drivers really believe the BD doesn't do anything as a dept, just select reps. What you have read here that leans that way are from frustration of being asked to do more and more. To do things they shouldn't be responsible for.
I personally don't mind spending a few minutes to help a customer learn about Worldship or how to properly pack a box, but when I am racing the clock to get all my outcoming volume to the meet point, I simply don't have the time to spend.
When you say that Delivery operations is not a perfect working enviroment, you are preaching to the choir SISTA. AMEN.
You insult me by acting as if I made up the story about packages being hidden in our building. It is a true fact!
OK,OK..I am sorry for that, I should have worded that different. It's not that I don't believe you as much as I find it hard to reconcile it in my mind.
I mean 149 packages in one day, deliberatley hidden in the building? First off why would anyone do that? Secondly, who would have the time to do that unnoticed? Someone would have a hard time intentionally hiding 149 air letters in our building, much less boxes. There has to be more to this story than you are telling or more than you have been told.
Never mind, I read you post up^there.
I think most drivers do an awesome job every day, despite poor decisions made by
some managers and supervisors. I never said that service failures did not affect a driver. By reading the posts made by a majority of drivers, I'm just defending BD because drivers think we don't do anything except push pencils and make bad decisions. It's just not true!
I think you may have misunderstood some of the posts. To me the pencil pushers that make bad decissions is the IE dept. We have a couple of IE people on this board that are smart and very helpful to us "dumb truck drivers". In fact I don't blame the actual IE people as much as I do the people above them. the people that tell them..."find a way to show this can work"
IE rows the boat and also dictates the sales force as what is expected of them and how long it should take to complete a task. They don't give us time for problem solving either! The boat would move faster if everyone on board rowing skills were in sync with each other, and not rowing against one another.
The only disagreement I have is that IE rows the boat. No, IE beats the drum for the rowing strokes.The problem is that each department has a different cadence for the rowing strokes.