The point of a bulk stop van

barnyard

KTM rider
We used to have 3 feeder routes, now we have one. It's all about the numbers. Same with pick ups. We have a guy that picks up 5-7 skids of paper, won't let a feeder get it because of the numbers.

UPS has so many instances where they spend a buck to save a dime. I suspect that it will happen more and more as we have upper level managers that have never been in package or worse, hired from another company.

Another crappy numbers thing that I do not get.....

A plane is late, so we send another driver to the airport for air. Those packages are later shuttled out to routes and we are told to make service on as many as possible. Those that are late, are charged to my center, not the airport, where the late packages originated.

Or if a feeder has a scheduled departure and the local sort is not quite wrapped. Supe holds the feeder for 45 minutes. The time is charged to feeders, not the local sort that held the feeder.

The way UPS does cost accounting promotes mismanagement.
 

sortaisle

Livin the cardboard dream
Hah, it's funny to here what all the moving vans are called in the different districts! Over here, there called Hershey's. But unfortunately it's a number they're trying to hit. It doesn't matter if it saves time or money or not. It's almost like I.E. messed up with their SPORH formula, because it never translates into real world savings. A numbers system will never work in the real world unless it includes a range of numbers to hit, not just one magic number. Numbers are linear, no factor for unforeseen situations like traffic and stupidity (which happens on the daily!) Our day as everyone knows has ebbs and flows. Numbers don't jive with ebbs and flows. I can understand always raising the bar if you want to maintain excellence, it just seems that it becomes too easy to be unrealistic when a large portion of your income depends on numbers (management.) It's a big crap sandwich and we all have to take a bite apparently.
 

sortaisle

Livin the cardboard dream
We call them "vans", or "city vans" around here. My first route was in a Ford C650 24' straight truck. It had a tilt cab and air brakes, so I had to get a Class B CDL. I still have that type of license, I just renew it every time it expires. Vans were great on that warehouse route, I backed up to docks and handled a thousand packages a day.

Haha, yeah it was great to handle a thousand packages a day ;-)
 

Brown287

Im not the Mail Man!
We call them "Chocolate Thunder's" out here in the Bay Area. However the name doesn't matter because bulk decisions rarely make any sense. We have multiple mall routes and outlet center routes and they all always go out slammed with every other car in the are taking over flow. So we will have 8 routes go by for a couple of stops while the whole time it could of been put in one chocolate thunder. It's all about numbers.
 

Random_Facts

Well-Known Member
It's quite interesting, that the 24ft truck has different names. I like the name "moose" lol. pretty classic. Well thanks for all the replies. Greatly appreciated.
 
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