TooTechie
Geek in Brown
I just made seniority driving so I can give you a pretty fresh perspective. Keep in mind this is all my personal opinion and what worked for me and the seasoned vets will disagree on some points.
1) At the beginning, don't take a lunch. You haven't earned it yet. Bring a lunch that you can eat in brief breaks. As you get faster take a brief lunch to sort, then take a longer and longer lunch until you are taking your full lunch. Other guys will bust your balls about working too fast or not taking enough of a lunch, but until you're out of that 30 driving days, it's not their job in jeopardy, it's yours.
2) Ask for a copy of a recent manifest of your training route and drive it on the weekend. Area knowledge is HUGE. Running the route in my personal vehicle once (took like 3 hours) was really a big thing for me. Took 90 minutes off my time.
3) During your 30 days , safely move quickly with a sense of urgency. Show your on car sup you're a hard worker and "walk at a brisk pace" back up the driveways toward the truck. Politely keep interactions with customers brief and move on.
4) If you can't find something and you're going to be in the area again that day, move on and come back.
5) Managing your work...Once you know your area and you're flying solo after a week or so, I recommend taking a look at the big stupid bulky stuff and if reasonable & won't take too much time, get rid of the big stuff. If you can't walk in your truck, it's much harder to find things. Once you've cleared your bulk and can move around, it's important to pay attention to what is going where. If you know the big pink box is going to 133 Main St, you'll be able to just grab it when you get to that stop. As you're trying to find packages, roughly sort them as you go. Push the packages forward or back on the shelf based on their number. If it's 7900, push it back, if its a low number like 7000, move it toward the front of the shelf. Stop sorting when you find what you're looking for. If you don't sort at all, you're going to keep reading the same labels over and over again wasting time. It's not hard to lose 5-10 minutes in the cargo area. If you lost 2 minutes each stop on 140 stops, that's 280 minutes (half a day).
6) Be safe. Any accident or injury before you make seniority will usually disqualify you.
7) Get off the clock as quickly as possible during your 30 days. As soon as you can punchout, do it. You can easily waste 15 minutes putzing around in your truck at the end of the day which can make the difference between you scratching or not scratching and during the first 30 days it's all about the numbers to them.
8) Before the morning PCM, ask your on-car how you did the previous day--it shows you care about performance and that will make a good impression.
9) Once you know your area like the back of your hand, it will get much, much easier and you won't have to move as quickly to scratch.
Once you make your 30 days, throw most of what I wrote above out the window, take your full lunch and breaks, etc. This is just to give you tips to get on the seniority list.
