A thought or two on 2008

dannyboy

From the promised LAND
I was thinking about the plight of UPS drivers over the years and one thing I would love to see in the contract.

An 8AM start time, with any hours over 10 paid at double time.

IMHO, if UPS has the resources and technology to set our routes up stop for stop, then why not get the packages to the centers sooner so the drivers could leave the building early. This in turn would allow most customers to get the delivery before lunch which in many cases would be a real selling point.

With a nailed down start time that does not float around at the companies whim, the pressure would be on them to make service, which if they dedicated the proper resources to that cause, could be done.

Now with the over time issue, if they knew they had to pay double time over anything over 10 hours, I would think they would have the incentive to get drivers in earlier, and with an 8AM start time, drivers would have more time in the after noon to spend with their families.

There are more, but these two things I would love to see.

d
 

tieguy

Banned
The problem with the technology is it can't make the roads any shorter or increase the speed limits to get the loads there sooner.
 

reydluap

Well-Known Member
I'd like to see something going on now with a contract in '08. I lost my largest P/U account last week on a slightly cheaper freight charge and a BIG scare that we are going on STRIKE in '08 and they had better get on board with FredyEx now to lock in their shipping service.
 

Ms Spoken

Well-Known Member
This doesnt have anything to do with the 2008 contract but, I would like to see an Adult Signature for any high value pkg. So in other words, when a customer sets the value at over $1000 the computer should automatically assign a signature required on the shipping label. That way UPS can collect the extra fee's for a high value plus a signature required and the drivers will know they are prohibited from leaving pkg. Something so simple could save UPS $$$ in the future. At out center we have trouble getting the high value papers to the correct driver until it's too late and then we (drivers) have to go back out the next day to have the customer sign the paper work saying they got their package. This is a classic case were the customer can say they never received the pkg.

But, hey I'm just a brown driver what do I know.
 

dannyboy

From the promised LAND
Tie

To borrow from one of my less favorite managers years ago, "dont give me excuses, I want to see results."

Lets see, we have close to 400,000 employees, not counting the private contractors. of that, roughly 110,000 are drivers of which 30,000 are feeder. That means that there are right at 5 employees for every delivery driver. Surely you guys and gals can come up with something? After all, the delivery drivers are too busy delivering the future of our great company, trying to cover up service failures, keeping the customers happy while downplaying the possibility of a strike, to focus on how to make things happen.

OR do you want us to show you the way?

Best

d
 

tieguy

Banned
Danny,

I'm all for your solution. In fact I may propose the same when I attend my managers union meeting. :thumbup1: I would love to mandate myself a 9 to 5 work schedule. If the company does not give me all my work in that window then tough **** to them. They will simply have to pay me an astronomical amount to stick around or let that customers last minute TDP pickup for a truck full of Next day air request sit on his docks until I do my 9 to 5 job the next day. No more me coming in weekends because some goofy customer actually has the gall to request a saturday afternoon TDP pickup for two or three thousand packages. No sir not between my 9 to 5 monday through friday schedule. You sir will have to let those packages sit until monday. Unless you sir can get my district manager to approve my coming in saturday at a premium overtime rate. Its a great idea Danny. Eventually we will stop making all those late pickups in package and delivery and then things will click. Our hubs and local sorts will get all those pickup pkgs in earlier shut down earlier, move the work earlier and then low and behold you delivery drivers will get your packages earlier in morning to allow your to work your 8 to 4 schedules. In fact I think your on to something. If you delivery drivers would refuse to pickup any packages after 4 pm each day then we could get the chain in sync now. Tell your customers they need to stop trying to cram so much work into our system after 4 pm. Tell your customers to close up and go home at 4 pm. Have the international union run an advertising campaign that suggests your anti labor if you ship a package after 4 pm. Then bring those dang package cars in so I can move them packages earlier and get them back to your earlier.
 

dannyboy

From the promised LAND
Tie

Come on now, lets not get off track. Having more drivers on road will help some of the problems you have addressed so well.

You see, cutting out two routes here at the center level because PAS can save us so much money and time is really a good idea. That keeps out the delivery drivers that have full loads delivering those rezzies instead of getting that volume back to the building. After all, what good does it do to have 90% of the volume back to the building before 7 instead of having 75% hitting the door after 830 so the sorts have to scramble to try and get the feeders out an hour late.

Sure, makes sense to me. After all, most of our delivery driver pickups are made before 7, and hell, I know about those that need even a later pickup. But you ever heard about getting what they have ready earlier on, and having a driver sweep the pickup clean later on? A driver that does not have several thousand pickup pieces on his truck from a 5PM pickup?

Get the volume back to the building earlier, yes there will be some volume straggle in late, but the majority would be processed and on the feeders, instead of still out delivering or picking up.

You see, the way I figure it, right now UPS is being really penny wise and buck foolish.

So Tie my dear friend, put your thinking cap on and come up with some solutions. Or do we have to do that part too?

As for you having to work on a sat to take care of a customer, lets just say that is one of the hard earned perks of managment?:thumbup1:

d
 

tieguy

Banned
yep . Problem is no one gets their pickup packages in earlier. That starts the deadly cycle that ends up getting you your packages later the next day. Sweeps are done. Problem is more and more our customers ar pushing this envelope.

We have package and tdp pickups as late as 8 pm sometimes later. No one wants to say no because they might switch to fdx. So we keep pushing the pickup window as far as it can go.

PAS and Ed is another story.

One solution could be in your house.Let us Hire part time ground drivers to make the pickups so you can do your 8 and evacuate. Your union will never agree to it though. :closedeye
 

toonertoo

Most Awesome Dog
Staff member
I would love to start early. It wouldnt be so bad to work 10 hrs, lots of people do every day, but they start early enough so the whole body of the day isnt shot at work.
I also know it may be a logistical nightmare. But it would be nice.
I dont think it would be so bad to have staggered start times, so late pickups could be covered and early opening companies wouldnt have to wait til after 9am to get their stuff. And there would be employees to cover both ends. People who hate to rise early and people who hate working late. All of my businesses open at 7am and most sit around waiting on us. Dhl is there earlier, and so is Fedex. And thats just my first stop.
I also think one of the reasons it wont happen, or cant is the reasoning behind changing the standards. It just shows there isnt that much work, its just taking us too long to do it. JMHO
 

upsdude

Well-Known Member
We're currently starting at 9:00 with a "left building time" of 9:15 on average. Most all of management agrees the problem is an understaffed preload. To assist us in exiting the property, UPS hired 2 off-duty police officers to stop traffic. The officers cost 25.00 an hour each with a 2 hour minimum. The later start time requires an additional NDA driver. Why not hire more PT folks and get the job done? Our last feeder arrives at 7:15 AM.

As a side note: Our center posted a bid list last week for 3 FT driving jobs. We generally average 25k per day in January. So far we're staying in the mid 30's.
 

DS

Fenderbender
Tie
Have any of your suggestions EVER resulted in actual changes in the way UPS runs things at your little managers meetings?I doubt it.Both hourlies,and low to mid level management at UPS are merely minions to the big brown megaphone that screams at us from high above.But I,
being human,am prone to having opinions on things that I probably can`t change.Danny`s 8AM start is the best way to improve service and get drivers home in time to see thier family.I`d like to expand on that idea to 3 different start times that would be applied to drivers by seniority.
7:30AM drivers would deliver early AM pkgs and have mostly resi areas to fill out the rest of the day.8:30AM drivers would be the ones with established routes that now start at 9:00AM.9:30 drivers would be cleanup drivers and could cover for problems like breakdowns and overdispatching and would concentrate on pickups.and the "sweep"to get the last minute volume the other drivers couldnt get.Ok that said, I also think that Eskew should invest in a fleet of helicopters to insure that traffic will not affect the time sensitive NDA documents and pkgs that customers are waiting for.They will remember next time,after all its only 3 mouse clicks to get to www.fedex.com
 

wornoutupser

Well-Known Member
I agree with starting earlier.
Fedex is on the road in my town over an hour before we even start on the belt.
UPS seems to think that backing up the start time is the way to secretly make us work faster to get home at the same time. GARBAGE!
We started at 9:15 Friday. We have started as late as 9:30 recently and we are a very extended center. Late next day airs did not seem to be a problem, just let us know where and how many. A 9:30 start makes for a 8:00 P.M. 9 1/2 hour day and way too many of us are getting more than a 10 hour dispatch. This results in wasted time for meet points, excessive miles every day and a PO'd driver force.
Our unload has to scramble when the volume hits in. This could be completely avoided with a earlier start to have the pickups into the building in a timely maner. This would allow for on-time trailer pulls to the hubs and on-time return loads. How can UPS argue with common sense?
 

scratch

Least Best Moderator
Staff member
I too think that earlier start times is a great idea with later start times for drivers with late pickups. One week a couple of years ago we were able to start at 8AM. It was great to see the look on the Fedex driver's face because I was beating him to the customer at some of my deliveries. If UPS wants to be truly competitive against them, this is the only way to do it. My Hub is only a couple of miles from the airport, and the air is usually behind my Package Car by 7:30. I wouldn't mind if some of the preloaders could run NDA and bulk stops to help out the Commercial guys, whether its a Combo or Fulltime position.
 

outta hours

Well-Known Member
Like Aerosmith said "Dream On" there is no way we will get an earlier start time. UPS time standards are based on pressure or "sense of urgency" as supervisors call it. They try to squeeze all they can in the shortest amount of time out of everyone. Preload, unload,pkg. drivers. The only one's who do not fall for their crap are the feeder drivers. I know from personal expierence. The start times will get later and the pkgs. will continue to get bigger.
 

Fredly000

Just Another in Brown
Additional Pickup drivers would be great, actually in our CTR
we have one route that when I ran it was consistantly done
at 3-4pm its all businesses while on my current route
I start my 20 pickups at 4pm and run till 5pm
then from 5-6 I run off as many resi's as I can. Hoping
to get them all done, otherwise I run back to CTR
and dump my pickups and go back out, roughly an
hour wasted... while the previously mentioned route
could have run my pickups and other pickups till 6
and I could probably finish resi's easily by 6,
we'd both be done at 6, but instead he's done at 6
and I'm still running around till 8-9pm...

Hell being able to leave the CTR before 945 would be a blessing.
Man if I could leave at 0800 I'd be in heaven... i'd probably be done delivering at 4pm just in time for pickups.
 

xracer

Well-Known Member
Starting early would be great, an extra hour earlier start time could translate to an hour and a half on the road by not having to break off for commit times and air but I do not see it happening especially in an out lying center like I am in because our loads can not seem to get here on time now and we are waiting for them even with a 9am start. I know some of the late loads can be the result of drivers getting in late with their pick up peices which could be helped by a earlier start time for drivers but it is hard to reverse the trickle down effect that has already been started due greatly in part to PASS and EDD overdispatching drivers. I know that on Mondays when we are allowed to start as much as 45 minutes earlier, because all of the loads are already there from the weekend, that my day is drastically improved. But on the flipside you have drivers that are going to pull back in at the same time no matter when you start them which is why our start time will not be changed because it does take away that sense of urgency from some of the people and will just make them slow down during the day taking away from company profits and that is the bottom line that is looked at on a corporate level...
 

toonertoo

Most Awesome Dog
Staff member
I dont think the sense of urgency psychology works on everyone.
Having a sense of urgency is a requirement, trying to meet impossible commit times, is only undo stress.
I for one would be working just as hard if not harder if thats possible to empty and fill that truck, coz even if I have a ten hr day, or more I still have a chance to do the things I would like when I get home, like work in the yard, take a walk with my dog, or get a shower and go out for dinner once in a while during the week. Instead of getting a shower, eating dinner, and preparing for bed. It would give all of us a little more flexibility. You could actually go to the doctor or dentist without having to miss a day of work. You could switch with a person starting later on a day you have an AM appointment. Or switch with an early person so you could make a kids softball game, or a church function. Yeah, "dream on", until then. It would be like the perfect job, and all the people in the eve, the sups and OMS would be happier too. I think less stress in the workplace would be great for business, not to mention the health of all workers, not just the hourly.
 

brownhorn

Well-Known Member
Let's get real...the reason for the late start time is that there are enough scared drivers who will run all day, work through their lunch, and work before start time in order to not get that mean ol' on road sup or center manager upset at them for their production. We are our own worst enemy. If UPS wanted to let us start early, they could and they would. Until enough drivers nut up and quit being such wussies, we can forget about the earlier start time we all want.
 
Start times are set by volume (especially air volume) availability. Customers want early deliverys and late pick ups. We are in business to meet the customers needs. There is no sensible arguement to starting earlier if the volume isn't there.
 
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