Business-Heavy Route -- Question

[Porknado]

That’s a hell of a pickup load on top of the deliveries. If the pickups are that big they need to sweep them ahead of you. 50 pickups with one piece each is one thing, but a Target is guaranteed to be minimum 100 pieces at least in my area.

 

[Est.1998]

That’s a hell of a pickup load on top of the deliveries. If the pickups are that big they need to sweep them ahead of you. 50 pickups with one piece each is one thing, but a Target is guaranteed to be minimum 100 pieces at least in my area.

That's what i was thinking but Target normally ships a majority of those little bags and little pkgs right? I'd get at least 10 forever bags prior to leaving the building and fill them up so i wouldn't have a bunch of mess all over the truck.

 

[Porknado]

That's what i was thinking but Target normally ships a majority of those little bags and little pkgs right? I'd get at least 10 forever bags prior to leaving the building and fill them up so i wouldn't have a bunch of mess all over the truck.

The last Target pickup I did nearly bricked an empty 1000. Huge variety in package sizes from the poly envelopes to large shipping boxes that only fit on the floor. So, I’d imagine it can vary a good bit.

 

[Whereistheunion]

So I'm covering for a driver this week with some super heavy pick-ups (compared to what I'm used to.) A little background info:

~160 resi stops, about 50 businesses

Pick-ups start at 11:30am. 11:30, 11:45, 11:45, 12:15. Then I'm supposed to do resi before the HEAVY pick-ups start at 14:30, 14:45, 15:00, 15:00, 15:30. Then resi's again until pick-ups start at 17:30, 17:45, 17:45: 18:00, 18:15, 18:30.

I was doing well until I rolled into Target 45min early for a 17:45 pick-up. ~450 pieces later and I'm now late for every other pick-up in my board. On top of that, I can't even move in the back of the truck because it's so packed. So I rolled back to the building, spent another half hour unloading all this crap I just picked up. Went back out and finished my deliveries.

The computer says I should've been back at the building at 18:49. *ing how?!? How do you guys manage this many scheduled pick-ups and still get everything delivered? Am I just in for a week of 9pm-10pm punch-outs or am I * and just don't know how to run this route?

This doesn't even include the 4 on-demand alerts for resi pick-ups I got throughout the day that had me retracing steps for every single one. Alert comes through at 3pm? Yeah, I was on that street at 10am and I have no *ing clue how to get back to to. Next alert comes through: "*! I was on that street around 11am." Over and over again. I also like how they have me scheduled to be at two addresses during the same pick-up window for stops that are liable to push several hundred pieces onto my truck at a time.

On top of all that, how do I fit an hour-long lunch break into a route that had me out 'til 9:30pm without a single 10min break, let alone an entire hour.

What the * am I doing wrong?

Sounds Awful, when your that screwed management knows this before you leave the building. Are you a 22.4 or on the 9.5 list ? Don't commit to service failures or missed pickups, notify your supervisor well in advanced before the hits the fan and definitely take your breaks. If you don't take your breaks this place (UPS) is going to break you mentally and physically.

 

[BrownStains]

The 1130 -1215 pickups are probably on area, pick them up when you deliver that area then the metro That you break off for starts at 230 -330 ,More delivery, then break off again at 530 -630. As far as picking up places that have a lot Or smalls in bags, don’t count and scan every piece ,separate the air, toss in the truck and put an estimate in the board . You might just have to bite the bullet and goto dispatch to take some resi off though . I’ve covered a lot of routes and can tell you that pickup times in the diad aren’t always accurate

 

[IVE GOTTA PACKAGE 4U]

210 is a very high stop count for a route that has that many business deliveries and pickups, let alone heavy pickups that blow out your pkg car. How many pieces did you go out with?

Now that you have an idea what the route is like, take your lunch per contract as others have said (here in the Central it's 30 minutes between the 3rd and 6th hr of work) and send messages hectoring mgmt re: getting help to make service on pickups.

That's also a gnarly pickup schedule. Unless the business deliveries were easy/no fuss I might not have a single resi delivered besides NDAs til after the second wave of pickups. And you say those are heavy, so it seems like the route waaaaaay overdispatched and you're set up to fail.

But you have until 23:59 to deliver your air savers...

 

[burrheadd]

don’t count and scan every piece ,separate the air, toss in the truck and put an estimate in the board .

Terrible advice
This will get you fired

 

[BrownStains]

Terrible advice
This will get you fired

Not when you own

 

[MrBates]

So I'm covering for a driver this week with some super heavy pick-ups (compared to what I'm used to.) A little background info:

~160 resi stops, about 50 businesses

Pick-ups start at 11:30am. 11:30, 11:45, 11:45, 12:15. Then I'm supposed to do resi before the HEAVY pick-ups start at 14:30, 14:45, 15:00, 15:00, 15:30. Then resi's again until pick-ups start at 17:30, 17:45, 17:45: 18:00, 18:15, 18:30.

I was doing well until I rolled into Target 45min early for a 17:45 pick-up. ~450 pieces later and I'm now late for every other pick-up in my board. On top of that, I can't even move in the back of the truck because it's so packed. So I rolled back to the building, spent another half hour unloading all this crap I just picked up. Went back out and finished my deliveries.

The computer says I should've been back at the building at 18:49. *ing how?!? How do you guys manage this many scheduled pick-ups and still get everything delivered? Am I just in for a week of 9pm-10pm punch-outs or am I * and just don't know how to run this route?

This doesn't even include the 4 on-demand alerts for resi pick-ups I got throughout the day that had me retracing steps for every single one. Alert comes through at 3pm? Yeah, I was on that street at 10am and I have no *ing clue how to get back to to. Next alert comes through: "*! I was on that street around 11am." Over and over again. I also like how they have me scheduled to be at two addresses during the same pick-up window for stops that are liable to push several hundred pieces onto my truck at a time.

On top of all that, how do I fit an hour-long lunch break into a route that had me out 'til 9:30pm without a single 10min break, let alone an entire hour.

What the * am I doing wrong?

Number one, don't ever look at the computer. That last stop eta is fake news. Second, your probably overdispatched, cause that's what they do to cover drivers. Just work at a safe steady pace, and if you get full, send a message to the center so they are forced to dispatch some runners to cover the rest of your pickups. Make sure you come in insanely late and take every crumb that falls off the table. They'll adjust the stop count eventually.

 

[PPH_over_9000]

Okay, so, time to answer a few questions.

The first set of pick-ups were almost all smaller stores in strip malls. The second set was big box stores (Target, Best Buy, Michaels), the third set was basically the second set all over again with the addition of a jewelry store that had three scheduled pick-ups in different parts of the store, but the only information in the DIAD was "PU 1800 2100 FRONT."

The resi's were super tight and my only saving grace. I was delivering in the neighborhood I grew up in. It's easy to get turned around on streets where 6 houses share the same address and go by unit numbers, and the apartments I needed to get into are always locked down tight. Manned security gate, locked doors everywhere. Other than that it was pretty sweet.

total miles: 43

I absolutely counted every piece I picked up. One of the workers at Target looked at me like I was out of my mind, lol.

Target definitely had a lot of bags (~150), but everything else was in boxes.Took up my 3000/7000, 4000/8000, 5000, and 6000 shelves, packed as tightly as I could underneath the shelves, and then I honestly got a little frustrated and just piled the rest of the up the middle because I had already made the decision to go back to the building to unload before continuing the route.

I went out with either 246 or 264 pieces. Brought back at least twice that.

2.53hrs (or ticks? idk) over-allowed, and I really don't follow that too closely but I like to use it as a bit of a guide. Typically I'm finishing my routes within +-20min of the computer's estimate.

I'm a 22.4, just hit day 320 of driving today but I worked the preload for 9 years. That's honestly what I hate: the 22.4 position. Keep me on a route for more than a day or two at a time and the job is lovely. You know what to expect, you know what's expected of you. Lately they've taken to scheduling me off for the day, then right after the PCM I hear my name called and all of a sudden I'm on a route. It's nice to work for the day but at least give me a chance to wrap my head around the route and figure out what I'm gonna be driving into.

Any more questions, feel free to ask. They took me off the route today, though. Managed to have a customer call in a complaint. Beauty supply store. Apparently I was rude because I waited for them to write COD checks instead of prerecording the stop and coming back later. So today I was on the backroads, 146 stops/110 miles. It wasn't bad at all I just wasn't feelin' the job after yesterday. Couldn't stop feeling miserable in the rain all day.

 

[bumped]

Okay, so, time to answer a few questions.

The first set of pick-ups were almost all smaller stores in strip malls. The second set was big box stores (Target, Best Buy, Michaels), the third set was basically the second set all over again with the addition of a jewelry store that had three scheduled pick-ups in different parts of the store, but the only information in the DIAD was "PU 1800 2100 FRONT."

The resi's were super tight and my only saving grace. I was delivering in the neighborhood I grew up in. It's easy to get turned around on streets where 6 houses share the same address and go by unit numbers, and the apartments I needed to get into are always locked down tight. Manned security gate, locked doors everywhere. Other than that it was pretty sweet.

total miles: 43

I absolutely counted every piece I picked up. One of the workers at Target looked at me like I was out of my mind, lol.

Target definitely had a lot of bags (~150), but everything else was in boxes.Took up my 3000/7000, 4000/8000, 5000, and 6000 shelves, packed as tightly as I could underneath the shelves, and then I honestly got a little frustrated and just piled the rest of the * up the middle because I had already made the decision to go back to the building to unload before continuing the route.

I went out with either 246 or 264 pieces. Brought back at least twice that.

2.53hrs (or ticks? idk) over-allowed, and I really don't follow that too closely but I like to use it as a bit of a guide. Typically I'm finishing my routes within +-20min of the computer's estimate.

I'm a 22.4, just hit day 320 of driving today but I worked the preload for 9 years. That's honestly what I hate: the 22.4 position. Keep me on a route for more than a day or two at a time and the job is lovely. You know what to expect, you know what's expected of you. Lately they've taken to scheduling me off for the day, then right after the PCM I hear my name called and all of a sudden I'm on a route. It's nice to work for the day but at least give me a chance to wrap my head around the route and figure out what I'm gonna be driving into.

Any more questions, feel free to ask. They took me off the route today, though. Managed to have a customer call in a complaint. Beauty supply store. Apparently I was rude because I waited for them to write COD checks instead of prerecording the stop and coming back later. So today I was on the backroads, 146 stops/110 miles. It wasn't bad at all I just wasn't feelin' the job after yesterday. Couldn't stop feeling miserable in the rain all day.

That's the best complain to have. You did it the way your suppose to do it.

 

[Est.1998]

Apparently I was rude because I waited for them to write COD checks instead of prerecording the stop and coming back later.

I don't come back either.
I'll wait as long as it takes for you to write the checks or I'm taking the cod boxes and try again tomorrow.

 

[eats packages]

That's great in theory until you can't get to delivery pieces because if pickup pieces. I don't understand why there are 3 different blocks of pickups. I would try to combine them into 2 blocks, possibly 1.

Is this a route you could pull a tp-60 on to make the early pickups just so you have more room?

They'd better weld an hitch to the back of the first so you can pull two of them with that many pickups.

Dispatch follows the driver, in my opinion. Looks like management wanted to make them their X-man. And they must really run around to prevent service failures.

But let me tell you a story: We had a guy preload for 10 years here, drove for 4. Ran their ass off every day for 2 years, had to take whole months off for disability year 3. Decided to slow down only to be terminated on their 4th year. Did not overhear the details at the time but it was a real shocker. Don't be like them.

2.53hrs (or ticks? idk) over-allowed

It means you burned the route up good. Probably

 

[Red Devil]

Okay, so, time to answer a few questions.

The first set of pick-ups were almost all smaller stores in strip malls. The second set was big box stores (Target, Best Buy, Michaels), the third set was basically the second set all over again with the addition of a jewelry store that had three scheduled pick-ups in different parts of the store, but the only information in the DIAD was "PU 1800 2100 FRONT."

The resi's were super tight and my only saving grace. I was delivering in the neighborhood I grew up in. It's easy to get turned around on streets where 6 houses share the same address and go by unit numbers, and the apartments I needed to get into are always locked down tight. Manned security gate, locked doors everywhere. Other than that it was pretty sweet.

total miles: 43

I absolutely counted every piece I picked up. One of the workers at Target looked at me like I was out of my mind, lol.

Target definitely had a lot of bags (~150), but everything else was in boxes.Took up my 3000/7000, 4000/8000, 5000, and 6000 shelves, packed as tightly as I could underneath the shelves, and then I honestly got a little frustrated and just piled the rest of the * up the middle because I had already made the decision to go back to the building to unload before continuing the route.

I went out with either 246 or 264 pieces. Brought back at least twice that.

2.53hrs (or ticks? idk) over-allowed, and I really don't follow that too closely but I like to use it as a bit of a guide. Typically I'm finishing my routes within +-20min of the computer's estimate.

I'm a 22.4, just hit day 320 of driving today but I worked the preload for 9 years. That's honestly what I hate: the 22.4 position. Keep me on a route for more than a day or two at a time and the job is lovely. You know what to expect, you know what's expected of you. Lately they've taken to scheduling me off for the day, then right after the PCM I hear my name called and all of a sudden I'm on a route. It's nice to work for the day but at least give me a chance to wrap my head around the route and figure out what I'm gonna be driving into.

Any more questions, feel free to ask. They took me off the route today, though. Managed to have a customer call in a complaint. Beauty supply store. Apparently I was rude because I waited for them to write COD checks instead of prerecording the stop and coming back later. So today I was on the backroads, 146 stops/110 miles. It wasn't bad at all I just wasn't feelin' the job after yesterday. Couldn't stop feeling miserable in the rain all day.

It doesn’t matter if they have a route for you or not. They have to give you 8 hours of work once you’re at the building.

 

[allahuakbar]

Just slug it up and bring work back.

 

[Misthios]

I have a business heavy route. It's about a 60/40 or 70/30 percent on the regular. I have 39 pickups. Thank God no targets or any of that crap. I get some what I can get done everyday. My pickups don't start until 2:30- 2:45 then 3:40-5:15 so I'm fortunate on that end. Don't be afraid to tell them you need sweeps at heavier pickups. That is their problem to figure out not yours. Find out how late you can pickup target. If you have until let's say 8pm to do it then get there later when you have more room and no rush. Also head into office first thing tomorrow and ask to know why you are dispatched with so much more than regular driver. Push the issue. Get ty and call them out or you will continue to get ed. They used to try and do that to me when I was a swing driver. I don't mind a little over the norm but if you're trying to give me 30-50 more stops then we got us a problem and yes I will make sure they and everyone around knows it. If asking doesn't fix it then just die on them. They will learn eventually.

 

[BlackCat]

I dont give a rats ass how "tight" an area is. If you are doing 30 stops an hour, thats still a stop every 2 minutes for 7 straight ing hours to do your 210 stops.

Screw that.

 

[Fido]

Every time I get screwed it’s 2300 eta to building time.

 

[Jakamoe]

If a customer like target is that heavy, I would let mgmt know and they would send a 24 footer with someone else, or a feeder if it's too heavy. If you find yourself going to get behind because 1 customer is blowing you out, pick up your phone.

 

[DriverNerd]

It's nice to work for the day but at least give me a chance to wrap my head around the route and figure out what I'm gonna be driving into.

As a cut driver myself I'm telling you to adjust your attitude. I don't mean that negatively, I really don't. You care and that's great, but it really will just stress you out. I don't care what the day has in store for me on a route I don't know and I never look at a route I'm doing in detail before taking off, just a quick glance at EDD for my air. I totally wing it every time. I follow ORION and do my best not to have missed business or late air. I miss pickups all the time because it says front door but it's supposed to be at the dock (or vice versa), they close at 4 when they used to be at 5 but it still says 5 in the diad, etc. I bomb most of the time and it doesn't bother me at all. Just one stop at a time and send in messages when something can't be done. NMP