was passed on to me from a former employee at our hub

[aspenleaf]

we'd love to load it for you that way...unfortunately management doesn't give us the adequate time to do so. With the way the preload is run, the guy who suggested section loading is more on target here. I do my best but my loads are not stop for stop, they are for the most part, but I just don't have time to re-sequence a blown out section every time I get a package. On one of my trucks the 8000 section takes up half the truck often time...how do I sequence that?

Very true and when you do get it loaded stop for stop you get a last minute add/cut and half your packages are taken off and then you get a bunch of other packages that don't fit in the area that just opened up and the truck looks like crap. All your hours of hard work to have a nice load are gone and the driver is mad at you (unless they know that it was not your fault and mine do) for a bad load.

 

[under the radar]

Taken from PAS, preload assist system, EDD, ups

When Will PAS Work?
​

".....PAS requires a perfect load to be successful. You don’t have time to sort, you don’t have time look around the car for more packages at a stop. Apparently it never dawned on the engineers who set up PAS that the perfect load is like a Unicorn. It’s a mythical beast, it’s a beautiful thought, it’s a wonderful dream, but it’s an illusion.

There are several things that prevent preloaders from being able to give perfect loads. First, the expectations of the engineers are too high when predicting how much work a loader can do. We have loaders who used to struggle with 4 cars now being told they have to load 6. No one can load 6 cars and give perfect loads. And yet PAS is not successful unless the load is perfect. So unrealistic expectations doom the program right from the get-go.

The next thing that dooms the perfect load is the simple logistics of loading a package car that fills up. As the floor begins to fill, it gets more difficult to get into the car and keep the load in order. When the floor fills to a point where parts of the shelves become inaccessible, then the perfect load is doomed. Once the perfect load is compromised, then PAS is not going to work that day in that car. This happens to alot of cars, everyday. The solution could be a stack bench and more time. Don’t load the bulk to a point where any shelf becomes unreachable. Every shelf must be accessible until the last package comes down. Then the bulk is loaded after the sort wraps.

But this means taking the time to give a quality load and UPS refuses to do this. They want every package moved into the car as it comes out of the boxline. That way it isn’t handled twice, that way fewer loaders can move more boxes into the cars in a shorter period of time. But the perfect load that PAS requires to be successful is not possible unless the bulk is held out of the car and loaded last.

But I see the mythical beast of a perfect load far too seldom. I find myself having to sort the car just like I did before PAS. Sorting takes time and time is money. And time and money are what PAS was supposed to save. That savings will never come until the engineers solve the problem of the perfect load and I don’t think they can do it. A perfect load takes time and they have promised to save time and they are going to do it by cutting preload hours. But then PAS doesn’t work for the driver. You can’t have your cake and eat it too."

you can catch the whole article and many others at the link above. I just have to ask though does this sound familiar to drivers and my fellow preloaders? This was passed on from a friend of mine at work, hopefully he'll sign up here too and join in on the fun.

If the loader has common sense, does his/her job with integrity and the delivery order (DOL) is done correctly, PAS works! I started when we used paper, pre-Next Day Air etc.
and I wouldn't have it any other way. The key in any productive relationship is communication. If you communicate with dispatch and with the preloader in a constructive and positive way PAS can be a great experience.

I understand that some people are difficult to reach but I have had really good results with this approach.

 

[scratch]

PAS is set up to fail whether it's the loader or the driver. The loader hasn't the time to load every package in order and the driver not the time to search for the multiple pieces. However if proper loading was taught it would make a difference. When I started loading I was told to get the 1000 and 2000 sections perfect, get all others close as possible, use floor for oversize, haz. etc. If the 1,2,3,4 thousand sections were blownout and loader ran out of shelf space then pull the 5,6,7,8 thousands to th efloor starting at back of those sections that way the earlier areas were on shelves and the latter was on floor. I used to load this way and my drivers liked the way I loaded every day they knew where the parcels would be. We also drew arrows and wrote floor with # of pieces on floor written on the lead box on the shelf. These habits are all but gone it takes a loader that has been around more than 5 or 6 years to have been taught this way. Now it is just get it close and let the driver take 10 hours to figure it out!

Mittan, you have got the right idea. The first few sections are the most important to be loaded correctly. Then the driver has empty shelf space so he can have room to set the next stops up the way he wants to run them. It is also nice if the Preloader can load overflow and oversize boxes on the floor with the shippers delivery address facing out where we can see them. My loader sometimes will take her crayon and write the street number on the side, thats all I need to know to take a look at that particular box. Common sense doesn't seem to be taught anymore at UPS.

P.S., that original article that started this thread came from Denver Brown. The driver does a great job with it.