satelite route

[satellitedriver]

2 satellite routes were created at my center a little over 1 year ago. I won the bid on one of the routes and ran it for 10 months. It was a WIN WIN situation for me since the routes were moved to my hometown, just 10 minutes from my house. However, under our LOCALS approved and ADDED Satellite language, the satellite routes fell under the same bid as our regular centers routes and were included in our most recent bid. I was bid off by seniority and fell under the same seniroty rules list as the satellite routes home center.

I would see what your local says in regards to your situation, because from the research I have done, it is not done the same way in some regions.

Gman is right.
As I posted earlier #5, read the fine print.
My route was started before the union had any say so.
That is why I still run a satellite route.
Once they got a finger in that pie, well lets just say, 4 and 20 black birds flew out.
PAX

 

[satellitedriver]

I'd give up my left pinkie finger if they would just go ahead and put ours in. That finger is crooked anyway.

Be careful what you wish for.
PAX

 

[govols019]

OK, maybe just the fingernail.

 

[Newman]

Satelite..what type of package car are you in a 700 or a Freightliner Sprinter?? Lots of chatter of a satelite route coming to our center maybe 2!! Do you wash your package car yourself?? Thanks for your time.

 

[trplnkl]

There is a good route up for bid now at my center. I have the seniority to get this route. There have been 3 drivers retire from this route since I have been at this center. The problem is management is saying they want to make this a satelite route. It is 45 miles to the first stop. They want to make a driver on a route next to this one pull a trailer, and drop it at a secure location. Isn't he going to have to drive 45 miles to his first stop now. How does the truck get serviced, washed? What about my pick ups and diad at the end of the day. I would have to drive 45 miles to start my day. I can't see how this would save UPS money. Sounds like spending dollars to save nickles to me. Any info on this matter would be great, as the bid ends on friday.

LEt me tell you part of what will happen if the ychange this to a Sat Center. As it is now, you will go 45 miles to your first stop thats 90 miles for your to/from travel time. This will be gone when the sat goes in, that give you a lesser planned day of approximately 90 minutes. How many more stops than usual do you think a driver will have to deliver to make up that time? The stops have to come from somewhere, probably some from the guy that pulls the trailer of any other route that neighbors you. So if this route currently goes out with a planned day of 9 hours (yeah right) containing 80 stops and 260 miles, you will increase to around 100 stops and 170 miles for probably less than a 9 hour plan.
Another thing, your start time will be pushed back as much as 45 minutes to an hour from what it is now.
Some of the details on DIADS, P/Us etc will fluctuate depending on how the center you work out of (and IE)decides it will work.
I do not work out of a sat center anymore, but I do cover drive for two of the three that we have out of our home center. Until the latest overall bid we had the sat center drivers bids were protected from bumping, but no more. Every two years we have an all around rebidding and the sat routes are included.
I'm sure all these different answers are confusing, however it's not a reality for your prospective route right now and none of them may be right to your situation.
If I were you I would go on and bid this route and then decide what to do if the company decides to do the change of operations.

 

[govols019]

He's still in an old P-500.

 

[trplnkl]

Ok,

When we walked into his office, the first person I saw was the DM behind the desk.
"Big Daddy Dave",

PAX

Is that Big, Cigar smoking Dave Snid......??

 

[soberups]

The satellite centers are a joke, and they dont save UPS any money. In theory, they are saving the deadheading time....but in reality they are simply shifting the cost to other areas that IE is oblivious to;
1. They have to pay rent to a business for the space to park and secure the truck(s)
2. They have to install a trailer hitch on a car, obtain or reaasign a pup trailer, and pay the pup driver .25 an hour more.
3. They are paying preload to load the trailer...then they are paying the driver to rehandle those same packages AGAIN when he loads his truck.
4. The driver who pulls the trailer cannot make service on all of his NDA pkgs since he must get rid of the trailer first. This means that someone else in his loop has to break off and add miles to service these packages.
5. If the satellite drivers cant get all their stops off before the scheduled pull time for the trailer...they must go back out to finsh afterward. The satellite drivers in my center are averaging almost as many miles now as they did when their routes were in the building.
6. They either need to pay an independent mechanic to service the trucks, or else shuttle them back and forth from the center for maintainence and repairs.
7. When the bid satellite driver is on vacation,sick or injured, the cover driver is PAID for the time it takes him to drive from the building to the satellite location. This means that, for 6 to 8 weeks out of the year, UPS is still paying for the deadhead time that the satellite center was supposed to eliminate.
The bottom line is that some genius from IE came up with the idea for satellite centers, and mandated that they be implemented whether they work or not. Since IE is never wrong, and its decisions can never be appealed or challenged, we are stuck with them. UPS pretends that they work simply by ignoring the data that conflicts with the reality that they want to see.

 

[trplnkl]

I am not a big fan of Satellite centers, and you are partially correct. There are a few holes in your argument though.
The satellite centers are a joke, and they dont save UPS any money. In theory, they are saving the deadheading time....but in reality they are simply shifting the cost to other areas that IE is oblivious to;
Actually they also save an extra driver to eliminate some, not all but some overtime.
1. They have to pay rent to a business for the space to park and secure the truck(s)
Nope, most one car sats do not have a building and the company pays very little, if anything, to park the Sat drivers car inside the fense of a customer in the area. In some locals the Sat driver lives in the town where the meet point is and keeps his package car there.
2. They have to install a trailer hitch on a car, obtain or reaasign a pup trailer, and pay the pup driver .25 an hour more.
The cost of a hitch and a T500 traile are much less than that of the previously mentioned package car. The feed driver only gets paid the extra for what time he is actually pulling the trailer, in most cases an two hours per day if that long.
3. They are paying preload to load the trailer...then they are paying the driver to rehandle those same packages AGAIN when he loads his truck.
Most Sat drivers can get their car loaded within 30 minutes.
4. The driver who pulls the trailer cannot make service on all of his NDA pkgs since he must get rid of the trailer first. This means that someone else in his loop has to break off and add miles to service these packages.
Most feed drivers for Sat centers do not run committed air anyway, the extended routes don't usually have 10:30 commit times.
5. If the satellite drivers cant get all their stops off before the scheduled pull time for the trailer...they must go back out to finsh afterward.
That's why they don't start until around an hour after all regular drivers.(well, that and the fact that it takes them that long to get the feed to them) The satellite drivers in my center are averaging almost as many miles now as they did when their routes were in the building. I would say that in this case they may need to re-evaluate the trace on those routes.
6. They either need to pay an independent mechanic to service the trucks, or else shuttle them back and forth from the center for maintainence and repairs.
This is correct our center has to pay $300 a trip to have cars wreckered out and back.
7. When the bid satellite driver is on vacation,sick or injured, the cover driver is PAID for the time it takes him to drive from the building to the satellite location. This means that, for 6 to 8 weeks out of the year, UPS is still paying for the deadhead time that the satellite center was supposed to eliminate.
This is also true, however the cover driver usually gets a head start in the fact that he doesn't have to load his truck. That means that for 44-46 weeks they get whatever savings they perceive they are gaining.
The bottom line is that some genius from IE came up with the idea for satellite centers, and mandated that they be implemented whether they work or not. Since IE is never wrong, and its decisions can never be appealed or challenged, we are stuck with them. UPS pretends that they work simply by ignoring the data that conflicts with the reality that they want to see.
The replies that I posted here are from me voicing the same problems you just did.

 

[soberups]

Actually they also save an extra driver to eliminate some, not all but some overtime.
Its the same number of drivers, and same number of routes. The only change is where they park.
The cost of a hitch and a T500 traile are much less than that of the previously mentioned package car. The feed driver only gets paid the extra for what time he is actually pulling the trailer, in most cases an two hours per day if that long.
The number of package cars doesnt change. By implementing a satellite where none existed before, you require a hitch car and a trailer. Actually, you need two hitch cars, since one might be undergoing repair or PMI. And the driver pulling the trailer get pup pay for his entire day, not just the time spent pulling. See your contract.
Most Sat drivers can get their car loaded within 30 minutes
True, but that doesnt change the fact that you have already paid the preload to handle those packges, now you are paying a driver to do the same work twice. How is that efficient?
Most feed drivers for Sat centers do not run committed air anyway, the extended routes don't usually have 10:30 commit times
Every feed driver in my building has 10:30 committed air that he has to dump off on others in his loop. Two of our satellite routes have 10:30 commits also. The guy who decided to satellite the routes and the guy who decided on the NDA commit times arent in the same department. None of these decisions were made by local management, they were mandated from "on high" by an IE genius with a map and a crayon.
I would say that in this case they may need to re-evaluate the trace on those routes
What needs to be re-evaluated....is whether there is any realistic basis for satelliting the routes out in the first place. Again, these decisions were made by absent asnd unaccountable IE managers, not local sups who actually have a clue about the areas they dispatch.
This is also true, however the cover driver usually gets a head start in the fact that he doesn't have to load his truck. That means that for 44-46 weeks they get whatever savings they perceive they are gaining
When the bid driver is gone...whoever replaces him does so at his normal start time, not the delayed start time. This employee is paid time plus mileage to drive his personal vehicle from the center to the satellite location and back. Some employees refuse to use their personal vehicles for this purpose; in this case they drive an empty package car out to the satellite location, park it, load the vehicle that is already there, then when they are through they unload, park, and then drive the empty car back to the center. 7 weeks a year of this eats into whatever small savings might theoreically be gained.
Im not saying that there arent areas where satellite centers are feasable. What I am saying....is that IE shouldnt be involved in the decision making process at all. They need to be locked in a room with their maps and their crayons so that operational decsions can be left to the local management that actually dispatches the work in the real world.

 

[ups_vette]

sober..... Are you in I.E.?

 

[soberups]

sober..... Are you in I.E.?

No, I'm a victim of IE...I deliver packages.

 

[trplnkl]

Im not saying that there arent areas where satellite centers are feasable. What I am saying....is that IE shouldnt be involved in the decision making process at all. They need to be locked in a room with their maps and their crayons so that operational decsions can be left to the local management that actually dispatches the work in the real world.

Sober, did you not see where I said I was not a fan of Sat Ctrs? or the part where I said the answers I was giving were the answers I had been given when posing the same things you did? Thos are the "holes" I was referring to, the ones that management will fill with their bovine fecal matter.
Your set up on coverage is totally different than what we do here. Because it's only one or two routes that go into the trailer, the vacant route is loaded in a package car in the center using EDD instead of in the trailer. The cover driver does start at his normal start time and then drivers to the area and begins delivering. Returns to the center at the end of the day. Just as before. None of our feed drivers run or shuttle air, in fact they usually pull before the other drivers and a driver from that loop will shuttle last minute packages out to the Sat and feed drivers. Our Feed drivers only get paid the extra for the time they are actually pulling the trailer.

For the record , I 100% agree with you that those decisions should be made by the people that know the area and NOT IE.

One of our three sat centers has two routes that load there and the feed drivers route(loaded in the building). If they were to shut down that Sat and return the work to the home center the company would have to add another route at least 8-9 months out of the year. That is how they justify that Sat Ctr.

 

[outta hours]

I was told it has been on the satelite list for two years now. I was told it will be considered this Oct. or next Oct.

Do not believe what you are being told by management. I have seen it many times where they will use this "might happen" scenario to scare certain drivers away from bidding a route. They claim all sorts of things will happen to the route after you bid it. Then nothing ever does and someone else ends up with a good route or no one bids it and they assign one of their "little runner gunners" to run it everyday.In my supplement if your delivery area changes by more than 30% you can bump any junior driver and take their route. Check your regional supplement language. And if you want the route take it.