What do you do when a truck can't do the job?

CBUK

Well-Known Member
I hear stories about places that pose big deivery problems. For instance Venice or Amsterdam. I've been deilivering Cambridge in the U.K this week for the first time in about 5 years and I was struck by the ammount of bulk work we have generated in this time. Coupled with the fact that there are several new retail areas and many new businesses in the city I'm a little concerned at what peak might bring this year. We basically rely on package vans and bulk 16 tonne vehicles to deliver all our freight. We have no options with regard to pedestrian zones or emmision zones and other such things.

What does your centre have that no other centre uses to deliver packages? Is it true that some Package Car Drivers in the U.S pull a trailer as well? This is something I feel we may need to look at over time. I'm looking forward to the day they give me a bike and a bag full of letter packs!
 

helenofcalifornia

Well-Known Member
Or they send out two trucks if one can't do the job. Or send out the air shuttle driver to deliver the bulk stops that have all been pre-recorded in another drivers board so it looks like only one driver went into that area. I wonder if GB UPS is a "productive" with their drivers like we are in the USA?
 

Backlasher

Stronger, Faster, Browner
Or they send out two trucks if one can't do the job. Or send out the air shuttle driver to deliver the bulk stops that have all been pre-recorded in another drivers board so it looks like only one driver went into that area. I wonder if GB UPS is a "productive" with their drivers like we are in the USA?

I had 2 trucks friday. Long day and it was my birthday. emptied 1 and got the other cause we were short on 1000's and larger so they blew out 2 700's. Load SUCKED on both em. I'm still beat from friday.
 

Jackburton

Gone Fish'n
Pulling a TP 60 filled up means one less driver. Any truck that can pull a TP 60 at peak now does. Funny thing is peak comes earlier and earlier every year.
 

CBUK

Well-Known Member
Or they send out two trucks if one can't do the job. Or send out the air shuttle driver to deliver the bulk stops that have all been pre-recorded in another drivers board so it looks like only one driver went into that area. I wonder if GB UPS is a "productive" with their drivers like we are in the USA?

We would get sacked in the UK for trying that and the best part is it would often make sense to do it. Its considered DIAD Fraud. I was unfortunate enough last Xmas to be on the route next to the centre so I was able to go back and load up twice and sometimes 3 times in a day.
 

cosmo1

Perhaps.
Staff member
Or send out the air shuttle driver to deliver the bulk stops that have all been pre-recorded in another drivers board so it looks like only one driver went into that area.

Shoot, last month they gave me a printout of the barcodes of a bulk stop that wouldn't fit on my car and sent a porter to deliver them. Easiest stop I've had in a long time.
 

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
The problem I run into isnt containment of bulk...its that they keep loading my route into one of the long, skinny, single-axle P-7's with sliding rear doors. The damn things have the turning radius of an aircraft carrier, they get high-centered on a cigarette butt, and on my hilly rural route with tight, windy, steep roads the single rear wheels tear huge ruts into gravel driveways and I have literally gotten stuck on wet pavement.

A lot of the roads on my route are narrow with no shoulders, and the driveways are 1/2 a mile long, so I have no choice but to get off the road and drive down to the house. When I am on the way out in one of these cars, the turning radius is so bad that when I try to make a right turn out of the driveway onto the road, I wind up swinging all the way across both lanes and I have to stop and back up to keep from going into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. When this is happening on a 45 mph road with a blind corner, I am in danger of getting hit head on. They might as well be sending me out in a damn school bus. It is a constant fight for me to get my route loaded in a conventional , shorter P7 with dual rear wheels and a suitable turning radius. The genius who ordered these "skinny" P7's needs to be castrated so that his idiot spawn will not do any further damage to the gene pool.
 
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