The point of a bulk stop van

[Random_Facts]

Well the title should be self explaining. The point of a bulk stop van is to take a bulk stop from a company. Put it in, and presto one driver takes all the boxes to one company. Yet our hub thinks it's more 'smart/clever/intelligent'. To have 3-5 drivers take one stop to a company. I suggested it would be easier to just put it in one truck. But my suggestion keeps getting thrown out each week.

We get the 6120 stewart (*************company) Monday-tuesday-wednesday-friday it gets about 760 pieces. Easily. These boxes weigh anywhere from 40 to 100pounds. But on Thursday it doubles, and comes down in Ireg trains. And not just one or two trains. but 5 trains doubled by 3.

So I guess my question is, why is management not smart. When they could save the company 'preicous gasoline money/time and saving' By delievering it all in one truck. Rather than 4-5 drivers. That just makes no sense to me.

Then again, I must say it's rather funny/odd to have your management come up on the line. Every single day. Look at the bulk stop that comes down without fail and say the line "WHOA, I had no idea that was coming down". I'm like am I in the movie ground hog day?

 

[soberups]

Well the title should be self explaining. The point of a bulk stop van is to take a bulk stop from a company. Put it in, and presto one driver takes all the boxes to one company. Yet our hub thinks it's more 'smart/clever/intelligent'. To have 3-5 drivers take one stop to a company. I suggested it would be easier to just put it in one truck. But my suggestion keeps getting thrown out each week.

We get the 6120 stewart (*************company) Monday-tuesday-wednesday-friday it gets about 760 pieces. Easily. These boxes weigh anywhere from 40 to 100pounds. But on Thursday it doubles, and comes down in Ireg trains. And not just one or two trains. but 5 trains doubled by 3.

So I guess my question is, why is management not smart. When they could save the company 'preicous gasoline money/time and saving' By delievering it all in one truck. Rather than 4-5 drivers. That just makes no sense to me.

Then again, I must say it's rather funny/odd to have your management come up on the line. Every single day. Look at the bulk stop that comes down without fail and say the line "WHOA, I had no idea that was coming down". I'm like am I in the movie ground hog day?

Its all about generating whatever metric Atlanta wants to see.

Atlanta wants an arbitrary number of stops per car and SPORH for each center. So a driver doing 1000 pieces out of a masher (thats what we call the big vans here) is dragging down the center's SPORH and making it look bad on paper. The reality of the situation is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is the number.

Also, there has always been a chronic shortage of suitable vehicles for this type of work. UPS has always had a rather bizarre fetish involving undersized vehicles, and an obsession with tryng to force delivery routes into cars that are one or often two sizes too small. Need a P-12? You will get a P-8, or maybe a P-10 if you are lucky. Need a 10? You get an 8, a 7 or a 6.

When I started back in the 80's, we had a mall route that was "dispatched" in a P-600 because thats all we had. This driver had to make 5 or 6 trips back and forth from the building in order to deliver the 3000 cubic feet of volume that the mall received each day. And when it got really heavy, multiple drivers had to get involved in the process and break off of their routes in order to help get that stuff delivered. The wasted time and effort involved with trying to deliver that mall in a 600 would have paid for a brand new 24-foot masher van in a month or less, yet the situation went on for years because I.E. in its infinite wisdom decided that the expense of such a truck could not be justified.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

A bulk stop with that much volume would be delivered out of a feeder here.

 

[iowa boy]

A bulk stop with that much volume would be delivered out of a feeder here.

Same here

 

[Dragon]

Sounds like they do not want to eat the feeder route for one stop.

 

[over9five]

Sounds like (against common sense) they want to keep those big package numbers for the center instead of losing it to Feeders.

 

[some1else]

Double trip is the thing they are trying to avoid. Our center used to put stops like that in a package car or MOOSE(a 24ft is not a masher its a moose big and brown!) and the driver would take his airs del those and bulk then go back to building and get his regular car. Lost time about 30minutes total for doubletrip

Now we do as above try to shove it all in the car and have random overflow pieces from all over the route shuttled out at noon by a supervisor-- lost time 2-3hrs by having to re-trace entire route

Our center manager knows this but said he is not allowed to have the double trips anymore

 

[iamupser]

More work for hourlies! Work as directed right! (we call them "furniture vans")

 

[soberups]

Double trip is the thing they are trying to avoid. Our center used to put stops like that in a package car or MOOSE(a 24ft is not a masher its a moose big and brown!) and the driver would take his airs del those and bulk then go back to building and get his regular car. Lost time about 30minutes total for doubletrip

Now we do as above try to shove it all in the car and have random overflow pieces from all over the route shuttled out at noon by a supervisor-- lost time 2-3hrs by having to re-trace entire route

Our center manager knows this but said he is not allowed to have the double trips anymore

My center had a stop last week that completely blew out two mashers and a P-700. Not "allowed" to do double trips? Hell, we do triple and quadruple trips around here!

 

[scratch]

We call them "vans", or "city vans" around here. My first route was in a Ford C650 24' straight truck. It had a tilt cab and air brakes, so I had to get a Class B CDL. I still have that type of license, I just renew it every time it expires. Vans were great on that warehouse route, I backed up to docks and handled a thousand packages a day.

 

[Leftinbuilding]

We call them the "Hun".

 

[Pacman]

We called them something like a Fagel?

 

[brett636]

Its interesting to see the terminology everyone uses for the 24 ft. vans. Here we call them Super Vans. Anywho, my building has some of the oldest super vans in the company from what I can tell. Over half of them are not suitable to make the trip from here to Louisville, and those that can are racking up the miles quick. One of the older Fords had a steering rack go out and they had to scrap it because they could not find a replacement steering rack. Given they are used a lot by the air drivers taking NDA pieces to Louisville you would think the company would want some newer, more reliable vans given the priority of the packages they are carrying. As the vans that are suitable for the trip to Louisville age we are seeing more and more break downs while on road. Eventually they are going to have no choice but to replace them as my building is at the breaking point already with having too few vans for too much available work. Who knows when that day will come though.

 

[some1else]

Those old ford Moose are horrific! Basically. A ford p1000 with a moose body on it. The p800 is unpleasant to drive those ford moose are downright scary. It seems that centers have alot of problems getting new moose i dont know why. One of our oldest ones had the shelves nailed up against the wall i inquired about how nice a few shelves would be for my load quality-- the mechanic said thry where "load bearing" and about the only thing holding the truck together!

 

[Shifting Contents]

We have a 24' "ryder" type truck we call bertha. We have a mall route that dumps a thousand pieces between two stops in the mall after running his air in bertha. He then two trips. It works as he has no resi stops. However, the problem comes from our center throwing every overflow stop onto bertha for him to deliver no matter where in town it is. So he constantly gets screwed.

 

[FracusBrown]

Moose's and hogs around here. We had rental moose's going to malls for years (everyday, not just peak). Before that they were being 7 tripped in package cars.

700 packages weighing 40-100 pounds won't fit in one truck without exceeding the weight limit. Average weight of 70 lbs would weigh 49,000 pounds. Multiple trucks sounds silly, but thinking you can haul 50,000 pounds in a moose (Bertha, hog, furniture van) is even more silly. You would probably need at least 3-4 non CDL moose's to haul 50,000 lbs.

 

[brett636]

Moose's and hogs around here. We had rental moose's going to malls for years (everyday, not just peak). Before that they were being 7 tripped in package cars.

700 packages weighing 40-100 pounds won't fit in one truck without exceeding the weight limit. Average weight of 70 lbs would weigh 49,000 pounds. Multiple trucks sounds silly, but thinking you can haul 50,000 pounds in a moose (Bertha, hog, furniture van) is even more silly. You would probably need at least 3-4 non CDL moose's to haul 50,000 lbs.

Considering the empty weight of those trucks is already exceeding 13k lbs., and a non CDL qualified truck has to keep it under 26k lbs. it would take atleast 4 complete vans to move that kinda weight. Honestly though, I've seen these trucks filled with heavy boxes despite the fact that they are probably over the weight limit. The chances of the them getting caught overweight on city streets is slim at best so little attention is paid to it.

 

[Raw]

Then again, I must say it's rather funny/odd to have your management come up on the line. Every single day. Look at the bulk stop that comes down without fail and say the line "WHOA, I had no idea that was coming down". I'm like am I in the movie ground hog day?

Not surprising. Management get`s surprised when X-MAS rush arrives!

 

[FracusBrown]

Considering the empty weight of those trucks is already exceeding 13k lbs., and a non CDL qualified truck has to keep it under 26k lbs. it would take atleast 4 complete vans to move that kinda weight. Honestly though, I've seen these trucks filled with heavy boxes despite the fact that they are probably over the weight limit. The chances of the them getting caught overweight on city streets is slim at best so little attention is paid to it.

That was my point. There are not all in one truck because they can't be. Even if they don't get caught you can't put 70,000 lbs in a box truck. Max weight for a tractor trailer is 80k, including the tractor and trailer.

 

[LifeUPSer]

Here where I am We have one of the stops loaded into a trailer on the preload. The loader separates some of the stops by delivery time. We then have the regular driver go out and then have the feeder drive out to meet him with the trailer, He drops the trailer at the dock and then leaves it for regular driver. The regular route driver delivers out of the truck and trailer all day long then when the feeder trailer is done they come and get it without a problem and no service disconnects.


Just my 1/2 cents of something that might work...............