DRA is it true?...

[dezguy]

The ability to operate sans DRA is the justification for being overpaid (by Corporate standards).

Stay the course of requiring someone to hold your hand while you work, and soon you will be staring at a minimum wage job.

As I said before, if and it's a big if, they can get dra to work the way it is intended to and if the technology in autonomous vehicles keeps going the way it is, I can easily see FedEx deciding to make all couriers, handlers and dropping wages down below the $20 mark.

 

[!Retired!]

Not having dra must suck....on the Saturdays during peak we didnt have it and I was looking at like 80 stops like WTF WHERE DO I EVEN START and then spent an hour putting them all on some app called route4me....and then spent absurd amounts of time digging for at stops

Try running the route in DRA order without looking at the map. If you learn the area and don't just follow a map, it wouldn't be bad. Now, if you're in an area your not familiar with, then DRA and the map does help.

As I said before, if and it's a big if, they can get dra to work the way it is intended to and if the technology in autonomous vehicles keeps going the way it is, I can easily see FedEx deciding to make all couriers, handlers and dropping wages down below the $20 mark.

And you'll never get anyone to work there. Also, if the vehicle is autonomous, how will the package get to the front door?

 

[Preventable]

Not having dra must suck....on the Saturdays during peak we didnt have it and I was looking at like 80 stops like WTF WHERE DO I EVEN START and then spent an hour putting them all on some app called route4me....and then spent absurd amounts of time digging for at stops

Was this in an area you had been doing? As a former swing I can sympathize with this, but at the same time if I had done a route 2-3 weeks with DRA I don't think I had any problem doing that same area if DRA went down. Being thrown into an area with no prior knowledge with no DRA wasn't super uncommon though, and thats when I would feel like you are describing... There are certain tricks you can do with your map book though. Lets say you had an area with 80 stops spread over 2 pages in a map book you would look up the address in the back and make a tiny notation on the package like 80 (for page 80) and 7c... then you could seperate page 80 from page 81 and put all the Cs or Bs together and makes it 100x times more manageable. Be warned though once you implement a tip like this don't be surprised if that 80 stops somehow increase! lol

 

[dezguy]

And you'll never get anyone to work there. Also, if the vehicle is autonomous, how will the package get to the front door?

The courier will then be a handler, sit in the truck and wait till it gets to the stop. The handler will go to the back of the truck, grab the pkg(s) and walk them to the door.

Pretty simple to figure out.

Ground manages to get people to work there for slave wages. You don't think people would work for $20ish/hour and some benefits?

 

[Oldfart]

The courier will then be a handler, sit in the truck and wait till it gets to the stop. The handler will go to the back of the truck, grab the pkg(s) and walk them to the door.

Pretty simple to figure out.

Ground manages to get people to work there for slave wages. You don't think people would work for $20ish/hour and some benefits?

Nobody cares about your science fiction dribble.

 

[dezguy]

Nobody cares about your science fiction dribble.

Couldn't come up with something original, eh? Not surprising.

 

[Nolimitz]

As I said before, if and it's a big if, they can get dra to work the way it is intended to and if the technology in autonomous vehicles keeps going the way it is, I can easily see FedEx deciding to make all couriers, handlers and dropping wages down below the $20 mark.

That's a HUGE IF... DRA is as bad if not worse than UPS's Orion

 

[Star B]

That's a HUGE IF... DRA is as bad if not worse than UPS's Orion

I wouldn't go that far. Ours puts it in stop order. Theirs puts it on a shelf, so they might have to go digging on the 9 shelf for their first stop. Imagine that with a bricked out sprinter..... no thanks.

I'll take my 'tarded DRA over ORION anyday.

 

[Nolimitz]

doesn't mean stop order make any friend'ing sense in the real world. cant see natural barriers like RR tracks w/ no crossings, canals, rivers, dead ends, the list is end less.

 

[MAKAVELI]

doesn't mean stop order make any friend'ing sense in the real world. cant see natural barriers like RR tracks w/ no crossings, canals, rivers, dead ends, the list is end less.

True, but half the battle in doing any route is knowing stop sequence. If a courier knows that DRA is just a tool to learn a route and doesn't really on it to completely learn a route, it can be very useful.

 

[McFeely]

doesn't mean stop order make any friend'ing sense in the real world.

No, the sequence doesn't make sense to most drivers who know the area or even with limited route knowledge.

But, you can look at the map and grab stops 13, 14, 15, 16, 60, 61, 63 and put them in order because they're all in the same neighborhood or on the same side of the highway. Pretty much the old way a lot of us learned routes with laminated maps and markers, right? This does the dots for you, just gotta watch the ACO stops.

 

[!Retired!]

Ground manages to get people to work there for slave wages. You don't think people would work for $20ish/hour and some benefits?

Some, maybe....I started this job for $13.50 in '99, that's $20.35 in 2018. But, I was out of work for 1.5 years before that.

Nobody cares about your science fiction dribble.

Can you 2 just stop.

That's a HUGE IF... DRA is as bad if not worse than UPS's Orion

I've spoken to UPS drivers about their ORION....same thing, no better or worse.

No, the sequence doesn't make sense to most drivers who know the area or even with limited route knowledge.

But, you can look at the map and grab stops 13, 14, 15, 16, 60, 61, 63 and put them in order because they're all in the same neighborhood or on the same side of the highway. Pretty much the old way a lot of us learned routes with laminated maps and markers, right? This does the dots for you, just gotta watch the ACO stops.

No need to move stops around, if it's DRA. Example: In my truck...you need stop 44, bottom shelf-passenger side-halfway back...need stop 52, top shelf-drivers side-towards the front...if it's not on the shelf, it's on the floor, also in order.

 

[McFeely]

No need to move stops around, if it's DRA.

Oh yeah, load your truck according to stop number if you're on DRA. But I'm talking about the delivery sequence that DRA spits out. I have never once run my route in DRA 1, 2, 3... order. 100+ stops and too many factors that DRA doesn't take into account. But the maps are still pretty good for the new drivers or swings.

 

[!Retired!]

Oh yeah, load your truck according to stop number if you're on DRA. But I'm talking about the delivery sequence that DRA spits out. I have never once run my route in DRA 1, 2, 3... order. 100+ stops and too many factors that DRA doesn't take into account. But the maps are still pretty good for the new drivers or swings.

I haven't followed it either. What I meant was, if you load it in DRA stop sequence order, it's a piece of cake to find each stop.

 

[59 Dano]

I am equally amazed that a multi-billion dollar company would push such an unproven system into service before working out the majority of the bugs.

Hmmm. You complain that people who don't work in real-world courier conditions didn't find and eliminate all the bugs that can only be identified in real-world courier conditions?

Our station was well past the first implementation of ROADS, and it remains a costly (to FedEx) fiasco. It now takes a 50% increase of employees to handle a 15% increase in freight.

Exaggeration.

 

[Fred's Myth]

Hmmm. You complain that people who don't work in real-world courier conditions didn't find and eliminate all the bugs that can only be identified in real-world courier conditions?

What successful Fortune 500 company rolls out an unproven and buggy system across the board and survives?
That type of management has taken down many a company.

Exaggeration.

I wish it were an exaggeration.

 

[59 Dano]

Well Roads basically doing what OpsMgrs couldn't. It Dispatches fairly(in theory, and mostly does it)

Oversimplified Consider a workgroup of 10, and say 1000 stops come in for this group, it will equalize(WORK Hours) based on the "knowledge" programmed into it. it may give some 100stops, some might get 120, and others 80 or whatever combination works so that all 10 routes get back around the same time, reducing overall hours. Yes roads adds routes, in the past and SRA group of 10 getting those same 1000 stops, might have one guy killing OT taking 160stops and someone else underperforming or just not having enough work to keep them out.

TA DA!

That is the bulk of what DRA is designed to do. It isn't meant for every station, it isn't meant for every loop. Its job is to reduce overall onroad hours for the loops where it's used. There are many scenarios where it works wonderfully, and that's where it will remain.

 

[59 Dano]

Mostly loops and groups that just don't do the teamwork thing. You have the OT CRR who would take every stop off you and drive for 24hrs if they could get away with it. You've got the slacker, who rolls next day freight everyday even if it's light. You've got the Old timer who just drops stops because "it's just too much" but still gets in before anyone else...

And managers let it happen and the couriers involved will swear that they way they're doing it is the best way to do it.

 

[59 Dano]

Not having dra must suck....on the Saturdays during peak we didnt have it and I was looking at like 80 stops like WTF WHERE DO I EVEN START and then spent an hour putting them all on some app called route4me....and then spent absurd amounts of time digging for at stops

Here's a little secret about working without DRA. You get your first package and put it on your shelf in your truck. You get your second package and it either goes before or after that first one. You get your third one, and it goes before the other two, after the other two, or between them. Repeat until there are no more packages to sort.

 

[59 Dano]

I've spoken to UPS drivers about their ORION....same thing, no better or worse.

The UPS people I've spoken to about it say they're required to adhere to it for 80% of deliveries.