AKCoverMan
Well-Known Member
It does often seem like these national accounts with one uniform pickup time everywhere are seldom impliemented well. We recently got pickups for all of the Carrs/Safeway grocery stores in our center's area.
There are two pickups for each store. One listed as "Accounting" which is at the front customer service counter and one is "Pharmacy". They were both set up at every store as 17:00 scheduled time.
Only come to find out the "Accounting" pick ups were all about a weekly (Monday only) NDA packet to their corp accounting center in Phoenix. And here in the Last Frontier NDAs have to be back at the center by 14:30. And the other days of the week we were stopping for nothing. Most of the Pharmacys have told me they only ship out returns to the drug companies about one a month or so. In the past they had just told the reciving folks in the back and we would come get the package from the RX. Now we have to poke in everyday to be told "nothing today".
Seems like the RXs would be much better served if they were the "smart pickups" you know the ones with a "?" in the DIAD that either changes to a "Y" or gets cancelled during the day. Most of the "Accounting" ones have now been changed to be handled by the NDA pickup routes or be brought to NDA meet points so we get them to the airort in time to make the plane.
We have a pickup at our Toys R Us store at 17:00 but we really pick them up when we deliver which is usually first stop of the morning out of the barn on that route. I asked about this and was told we can't make it a 9:30 pickup time even though the store wants to be picked up then, so we just pick it up early and it goes against our centers schedule compliance. Was told it was a "national" thing so we can't change the time.
Got several other "national account" pickups that simply do not ship and do not want us to come by. I turn these in to BD to follow up on in case they are shipping with the other guys maybe their corp can put the pressure on to switch. But otherwise if I have one of these that I KNOW does not want us to pickup I mark it as Non-Pickup, Not Ready and move on.
What Upstate is doing is taking care of the customer one customer at a time. He is running scratch so it is not impacting cost and it sounds like the manager of his local Gamestop knows this is above and beyond so they are not going to gripe if a late package does not go out at 17:00 becuase Upstate is off. Everybody is happy so why screw with it.
On the other hand there are times to put your foot down. We have a big national account WWGrainger who is probably our biggest total piece count per day in our center.. they get 70-100 delivered every morning and we pickup 70-100 every night. They also make a point of stating in their advertising that 99% of orders are shipped the same day.
Well they had some staff turnover and started having a problem being done with shipping when we got there at 17:15. Being the biggest account in town, I stood by while they finished and would get 20-30 more packages but was sometimes wating an extra 30 minutes.
I told my center manager about this becuase of course it was impacting over allowed. Finally he said next time I had that pickup I was to tell them that at 17:15 we had to cut it off, anything else would go out the next day. I did so and told the shipping folks I was sorry but this was above me and them and they should have their mgt get with our mgt and work it out.
Now the pickup time is 17:45 and we have orders to be off the property with EOD scanned by 17:46. I have noticed they are making a concerted effort to having everything done by then and it's rarely a problem anymore.
The weird thing is... the pickup is on the same route it's always been, and all of the other pickups are scheduled by 17:00. This particular route is almost all about pickups.. just a couple of bulk stops and a few businesses and a UPS store delivery that make some other routes successful by not having them. Then a bunch of NDA pickups, return to the bldg to drop the air, then back out to do 30ish ground/2DA pickups in the afternoon. All of these pickups are done by 17:00 except Grainger which was at 17:15 but now at 17:45. I usually have one break left when I get to Grainger so I load up what they have ready at 17:00, go sit in their break room for 15 minutes, come back to the dock and continue to load a piece or two at a time for 20-25 minutes. At 17:43 I mention to the shipper that it's almost time and he wraps it up. But I am still losing 20-25 minute where I am not moving. Hey, they set the schedule, not me!
There are two pickups for each store. One listed as "Accounting" which is at the front customer service counter and one is "Pharmacy". They were both set up at every store as 17:00 scheduled time.
Only come to find out the "Accounting" pick ups were all about a weekly (Monday only) NDA packet to their corp accounting center in Phoenix. And here in the Last Frontier NDAs have to be back at the center by 14:30. And the other days of the week we were stopping for nothing. Most of the Pharmacys have told me they only ship out returns to the drug companies about one a month or so. In the past they had just told the reciving folks in the back and we would come get the package from the RX. Now we have to poke in everyday to be told "nothing today".
Seems like the RXs would be much better served if they were the "smart pickups" you know the ones with a "?" in the DIAD that either changes to a "Y" or gets cancelled during the day. Most of the "Accounting" ones have now been changed to be handled by the NDA pickup routes or be brought to NDA meet points so we get them to the airort in time to make the plane.
We have a pickup at our Toys R Us store at 17:00 but we really pick them up when we deliver which is usually first stop of the morning out of the barn on that route. I asked about this and was told we can't make it a 9:30 pickup time even though the store wants to be picked up then, so we just pick it up early and it goes against our centers schedule compliance. Was told it was a "national" thing so we can't change the time.
Got several other "national account" pickups that simply do not ship and do not want us to come by. I turn these in to BD to follow up on in case they are shipping with the other guys maybe their corp can put the pressure on to switch. But otherwise if I have one of these that I KNOW does not want us to pickup I mark it as Non-Pickup, Not Ready and move on.
What Upstate is doing is taking care of the customer one customer at a time. He is running scratch so it is not impacting cost and it sounds like the manager of his local Gamestop knows this is above and beyond so they are not going to gripe if a late package does not go out at 17:00 becuase Upstate is off. Everybody is happy so why screw with it.
On the other hand there are times to put your foot down. We have a big national account WWGrainger who is probably our biggest total piece count per day in our center.. they get 70-100 delivered every morning and we pickup 70-100 every night. They also make a point of stating in their advertising that 99% of orders are shipped the same day.
Well they had some staff turnover and started having a problem being done with shipping when we got there at 17:15. Being the biggest account in town, I stood by while they finished and would get 20-30 more packages but was sometimes wating an extra 30 minutes.
I told my center manager about this becuase of course it was impacting over allowed. Finally he said next time I had that pickup I was to tell them that at 17:15 we had to cut it off, anything else would go out the next day. I did so and told the shipping folks I was sorry but this was above me and them and they should have their mgt get with our mgt and work it out.
Now the pickup time is 17:45 and we have orders to be off the property with EOD scanned by 17:46. I have noticed they are making a concerted effort to having everything done by then and it's rarely a problem anymore.
The weird thing is... the pickup is on the same route it's always been, and all of the other pickups are scheduled by 17:00. This particular route is almost all about pickups.. just a couple of bulk stops and a few businesses and a UPS store delivery that make some other routes successful by not having them. Then a bunch of NDA pickups, return to the bldg to drop the air, then back out to do 30ish ground/2DA pickups in the afternoon. All of these pickups are done by 17:00 except Grainger which was at 17:15 but now at 17:45. I usually have one break left when I get to Grainger so I load up what they have ready at 17:00, go sit in their break room for 15 minutes, come back to the dock and continue to load a piece or two at a time for 20-25 minutes. At 17:43 I mention to the shipper that it's almost time and he wraps it up. But I am still losing 20-25 minute where I am not moving. Hey, they set the schedule, not me!
