Green Pickups are not a concern to drivers?

Dustyroads

Well-Known Member
Upstate, you are sooo correct. You know I would never leave revenue sitting by the door. I have this rule, if you have a package within my reach with a UPS barcode on it, I'm like a package vacuum with them. I used to have a center manager who would say, that's money sitting there waiting for you to pick it up.
 

worldwide

Well-Known Member
I have a question about the new smart pick up. Let's say you have a business who is scheduled to have a pick up made only on Friday. This business, however, is one that you deliver to every single day, with inbound packages. On Wednesday, they have an outbound package prepared, with a label and barcode. Will we let the package sit until Friday, or just pick it up on our way out the door?

No different than today. If a customer has a prepaid package ready to go, they can give it to any driver, leave in a drop box or drop off at The UPS Store. If the package is ready to go, take it.

It's funny that I read a lot of comments on here about long days and wishing the days could be shorter. Along comes Smart Pickup that only requires a driver to go to a customer to pickup when they actually ship something. This will reduce part of the work day, yes? Isn't that what many people on this board have been asking for?

Smart Pickups helps UPS reduce cost for UPS (think of all the scheduled pickups we go to that have nothing to ship) and reduces cost for the customer ($10 flat fee per week vs. $20 in 2010).

Fedex Ground can not offer this--they are charging $20/week in 2010 to these small customers. This represents a $520/year savings to these customers. Will this generate some new business to UPS? Of course it will. The question is will the new business combined with savings from reduced miles and reduced paid day offset the reduction in revenue from customers that were paying a $13 or $18 weekly service charge? Time will tell.
 

barnyard

KTM rider
Upstate, you are sooo correct. You know I would never leave revenue sitting by the door. I have this rule, if you have a package within my reach with a UPS barcode on it, I'm like a package vacuum with them. I used to have a center manager who would say, that's money sitting there waiting for you to pick it up.

I grabbed up a package one time with an RS label on it. Turned out, it was delivered by DHL and the company packed the RS label so that it was visible. The package had been delivered the day before and the consignee hadn't opened it yet. Opps.

I have 24 pick up accounts. I see the change in PU charges changing 4-5 accounts. I can also see me getting back 4-5 accounts and I will also see a loss of packages at my UPS store (that's fine with me.)

Right now, there are 4-5 ebay sellers that ship 2 days per week. They load up 10-15 packages and drop them at the store. They all drive more than 15 miles one way to drop them. If those same accounts could schedule twice a week pickups for $10, I am positive they would do that. I can also see a couple of FedEx ebay shippers switching to us.

UPS screws the pooch on a lot of things, this might be something they get right.
 

browniehound

Well-Known Member
As far as I know, the initiative is now called Smart Pickup (no longer green pickup).

It seems relatively straightforward.

It is a lower cost pickup option for shippers that do not need a daily pickup. If a shipper ships more than $75 per week, there is no benefit, so it will only appeal to these smaller, lower revenue shippers.

It give them some lower cost alternatives to a daily pickup.

UPS will use its technology to offer this service. I'm positive there will be glitches at first. In the long run, it seems better to offer this choice than to force these shippers to pay the higher price.

May be worth holding off all the complaints until more facts are on the surface.

P-Man

I'm not complaining, I'm laughing at what UPS is calling it. Who do they think they're fooling? Are there really that many far-left wing nut-job shippers out there?

Why can't they say "we don't want to pay the labor and fuel costs if you're only shipping 3 parcels/week"? Its simply good business to not have a driver go by everyday for nothing. Most business owners would respect this and understand it. There is no to 'dress it up" with this green concept.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
Last year we stopped issuing one time pickups printed on labels like the call tags or RS tags. Instead, the call centers just issue an on call pick up and expect the driver to fill out all of the information on the shipping papers. It just kills a day, and it makes for inefficiency all along the cycle of the package in the system. Those packages, on shipping papers, can't be PAL'd in the system and have to have a PAL label generated by a person. The driver delivering the package has to use a minimum of a dozen extra key strokes to get it in the diad. And, for some reason, we chose to abandon one time pick up tags using a 1Z barcode for the epitome of inefficiency, the on demand pick up.

DS was on target with everything that is wrong with the on demand service, and he was being kind.

Annual cost for drivers to complete the Shipping Documents = $600,000
Annual savings by not maintaining the old CSC Pickup system that generated labels = $3,000,000.
And a customer can get a Same Day pickup with the Shipping Docs whereas the discontinued pre-printed labels always was the next day after the customer called.
As with most thngs, it was a compromise.
 

browniehound

Well-Known Member
I think Corporate needs to address their current ridiculous push on pickup compliance. At least how its done today.

I think pickup compliance is a good thing, but only for the customers that care. Some customers need a consistent pickup time. We should promise consistent pickups to them and monitor those.

We are currently tracking pickup compliance for every pickup account and this is driving some very bad behavior, extra miles, and unnecessary focus.

These new services need to be properly monitored, but should not use the current compliance tools.

P-Man


P-man,
I happy to learn somebody agrees pick-up compliance should not be the "be all and end all" of how run my route. Less recently, I would record pick-ups when I wasn't even at the stop just to staisfy this ridiculous goal for accounts that don't care.

I stopped doing this because its not an accurate record of my day and I don't want to go down that path. I now record as I do the pick-up. Except for the handful that want and need a specific time, my other pick-up times can vary as much as hour depending on the volume and the splits I'm given.

What's been happening recently is the OMS has been changing the PU times on her own. I'm guessing she is looking at times for the prior week and trying to get the times right. Its a futile effort. I can't believe we are paying someone to play with my pick-up times when it means absolutely NOTHING to my customers.
 

pretzel_man

Well-Known Member
I'm not complaining, I'm laughing at what UPS is calling it. Who do they think they're fooling? Are there really that many far-left wing nut-job shippers out there?

Why can't they say "we don't want to pay the labor and fuel costs if you're only shipping 3 parcels/week"? Its simply good business to not have a driver go by everyday for nothing. Most business owners would respect this and understand it. There is no to 'dress it up" with this green concept.

Believe it or not, there is a lot of market research behind that. Personally, I'm tired of the whole "green" push everywhere. What used to be just being frugle now called being green.

When I started with UPS, I got admonished for wanting to throw away a pencil pencil with an inch left. I was constantly reminded about shutting off electricity when I left a room. Back then, it was just to save money. Today its green.

Regardless, I guess it works.
 

pretzel_man

Well-Known Member
P-man,
I happy to learn somebody agrees pick-up compliance should not be the "be all and end all" of how run my route. Less recently, I would record pick-ups when I wasn't even at the stop just to staisfy this ridiculous goal for accounts that don't care.

I stopped doing this because its not an accurate record of my day and I don't want to go down that path. I now record as I do the pick-up. Except for the handful that want and need a specific time, my other pick-up times can vary as much as hour depending on the volume and the splits I'm given.

What's been happening recently is the OMS has been changing the PU times on her own. I'm guessing she is looking at times for the prior week and trying to get the times right. Its a futile effort. I can't believe we are paying someone to play with my pick-up times when it means absolutely NOTHING to my customers.

Brownie:

Please, please, properly record pickups at the time you are at the stop.

I've seen drivers improperly record their pickup time just to please this stupid metric. It does two bad things.

First, the driver puts him/herself in a bad spot. They can easily be disciplined for dishonestly. Second, it give management a false sense of what their dictate is costing.

In essence, if drivers really tried to get to every pickup within a 30 or 60 minute window, we will greatly increase time and miles. When a driver misrecords the pickup time, corporate thinks they can have their number without the additional cost.

I think corporate will need to understand that the metric can be met, but at substantial additional cost.

Here is the answer.... Pickups should be grouped into different types with different monitoring.

There are core accounts that should have pickups at a designated pickup time. They should be monitored for compliance.

There are on area pickups that should be monitored to see they are picked up on trace only.

There are normal customers that just need a pickup after 2:30 and before their close time.

UPS stores need a pickup 30 minutes before close time.

Finally, drop boxes need to be picked up anytime after the scheduled pickup time.

I don't know why this is hard to do. It seems logical and I think our drivers and customers would understand it.

I'm hoping that "green" pickups shed some light on the situation. Green pickup will be much harder to execute than people think.

P-Man
 

whiskey

Well-Known Member
Then there is the straw that broke the camel's back. There will be some large accounts that will balk at the jump in weekly published pickup rates. And take their significant volume elsewhere. Just out of spite. Is that a risk we want to take?
 

purplesky

Well-Known Member
Brownie:

Please, please, properly record pickups at the time you are at the stop.

I've seen drivers improperly record their pickup time just to please this stupid metric. It does two bad things.

First, the driver puts him/herself in a bad spot. They can easily be disciplined for dishonestly. Second, it give management a false sense of what their dictate is costing.

In essence, if drivers really tried to get to every pickup within a 30 or 60 minute window, we will greatly increase time and miles. When a driver misrecords the pickup time, corporate thinks they can have their number without the additional cost.

I think corporate will need to understand that the metric can be met, but at substantial additional cost.

Here is the answer.... Pickups should be grouped into different types with different monitoring.

There are core accounts that should have pickups at a designated pickup time. They should be monitored for compliance.

There are on area pickups that should be monitored to see they are picked up on trace only.

There are normal customers that just need a pickup after 2:30 and before their close time.

UPS stores need a pickup 30 minutes before close time.

Finally, drop boxes need to be picked up anytime after the scheduled pickup time.

I don't know why this is hard to do. It seems logical and I think our drivers and customers would understand it.

I'm hoping that "green" pickups shed some light on the situation. Green pickup will be much harder to execute than people think.

P-Man


Drivers will not be disciplined for stop completing pickups in the 30 minute window while away from the actual pickup. We are told almost daily to stay within the compliance window. There are hundreds of routes nationwide that have pickups on delivery and there is noway drivers can deliver within the same 30 minute window everyday. With EDD it is no longer possible. Most days I can barely get my commercials off by 5 so its either missed stops or break trace and drive to pickups and lose an hour of delivery time. At this point the pretend compliance is the winner. WE ARE INSTRUCTED TO PRETEND. It makes no difference to me. I work as instructed.
 

barnyard

KTM rider
I would say that 4 out of 5 days of the week, I am 100% compliant with my pickups. The one day that I am not, with a 24 stop pick up, I have 2 that are not within the 30 minute window. We are told that 80% of our accounts have to be in the window.
 

upandcomer

Well-Known Member
Then there is the straw that broke the camel's back. There will be some large accounts that will balk at the jump in weekly published pickup rates. And take their significant volume elsewhere. Just out of spite. Is that a risk we want to take?

Any account of decent size doesn't pay the weekly pick-up rate charges.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
I think Corporate needs to address their current ridiculous push on pickup compliance. At least how its done today.

These new services need to be properly monitored, but should not use the current compliance tools.

P-Man

Unfortunately P-Man, as you know with the new QPR, everything must be measured and if something can't be measured, you degrade the process or task to do non-valued activities so it can be measured.

Rather amusing to watch if you are over 55. :wink2:
 
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soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
Annual cost for drivers to complete the Shipping Documents = $600,000
Annual savings by not maintaining the old CSC Pickup system that generated labels = $3,000,000.
.

Additional time allowance for having to fill out shipping papers by hand=zero.

Adjustments to the drivers dispatch to account for the wasted time=zero.
 

worldwide

Well-Known Member
Then there is the straw that broke the camel's back. There will be some large accounts that will balk at the jump in weekly published pickup rates. And take their significant volume elsewhere. Just out of spite. Is that a risk we want to take?

1. Most large accounts pay no weekly charge or it is discounted.
2. In 2010, UPS will have the most pickup options in the industry
3. Fedex Ground weekly pickup fee in 2010 is twice that of UPS Smart Pickup ($20 vs $10)
4. UPS ground and Fedex Ground rates are exactly the same in 2010 for 1-70 pounds
5. UPS ground commercial rates less than Priority Mail in most cases

Spite costs money in this case and there are not too many companies willing to pay twice as much for essentially the same thing (and potentially much worse, in some cases).
 

barnyard

KTM rider
The sales guy in my center thinks this will result in quite a bit more volume for our center. Sounds like a pretty easy sell for me.
 

Dustyroads

Well-Known Member
Hoax, it seems that we can save money by doing things more inefficiently, when it comes to issuing call tags. I'd think with all of the well educated folks we have working in the IT department, we could find one who could design and maintain our call tag programs. The shipping documents are a joke. Maybe they look good from a corporate office, but on the ground they are inefficient, revenue is overlooked as the call center no longer questions about additional handling or oversize issues, they fail to utilize the 1Z format, which should be part of every package in our system. When you figured the cost of using the shipping docs, did you figure the cost inside the hubs and centers where the packages could not be PAL'd? Did you figure the additional cost while the driver delivering the package strains to look for a shipping number which is not there? I'm sure it looked like a real good bargain, kind of like a lot of things we do. Heck, we could go back on paper and eliminate the cost of the DIAD.
 

govols019

You smell that?
I have three AEPU's on my route but yet they still hurt my pickup compliance when I pick them up before the 4:00PM commit time. I usually get them as I deliver around 12-12:30.

My on-road said to just wait until 4:00 to show the pickup complete but I like my job so I just complete it at the actual time I do it.
 
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