Pretzel_Man, you still ignore the main problem: the preload. I don't know you, so I won't put words or actions with your name. That said, however, I've yet to meet a manager who either had, the will, the power or the idea of how to fix the preload. I've met a lot of part-time sups who would openly admit what a fiasco the preload is, but none had any ideas on how to fix it, and their superiors weren't about to make any noises above their pay level to fix it. This was primarily because the numbers fall downhill, and everyone in a tie was expected to make those numbers happen, come hell or high water.
With that sort of directive, nothing will ever change. And it hasn't. I left package car a year and a half ago, and it was just as bad then, as it was the day the PAL system came on-line. Maybe even worse. I still talk to drivers in my old center, and they say it is as bad as it ever was.
We were always told that the drivers were the key to our business. If that was/is true, then everything supporting that notion is a solid preload. In all of my years here, I never understood this company's ever ending shortcuts in the preload. For all of the money spent on fancy, intuitive technology, it is only as good as the foundation it lies upon. The EDD/PAL system or even the newer ORION system could be designed flawlessly, but if the human element cannot implement it, how effective can it be?
If my preloader is running his/her ass off, struggling with full cages, too many trucks, a too late start time, and a impending driver deadline, how much blame can they really take when their loads are poor? That is the situation we have at UPS. There is no culpability on management's part. That is a large oversight, no?
When they introduced the PAL/EDD system in my building years ago, our management team deliberately switched all of the preloaders around to new pulls, telling everyone that with the new system, "A monkey could load these trucks now." After a few weeks of disastrous loads, we begged management to go find and hire those monkeys, because things weren't working out.
Surely, you can see the larger problem here.
"It will be fine." "It will all work out." That is what we were always told when the system has had its inevitable teething problems. Yet, things never really smoothed out. Ask any driver here how well their dispatch is, especially when they get a add/cut from somewhere else. More often than not, it is unpredictable, nonsensical even.
And that is the problem. Just because it is said to happen, doesn't automatically make it so.
