This is such an interesting post on so many levels. Its really numbers vs. route driver vs. relief driver vs. ie. vs center team vs. edd. vs. etc, etc. I really only want to touch on a couple of quick things. P-man had mentioned that when drivers are really overallowed that sometimes its not the driver but things like edd, am/pm time, misloads, etc. Im sure this is some of it, but I believe more of it is outside influences that are not even close to being built into each drivers day...for example, customers, handtruck, traffic, cod's..the list goes on. These are things that can never really have an allowance because they are so fluid from day to day. It seems to me that customers now days are just so much more "multitaskers" than they were years ago. There was a time that a driver would go into a business and three people would stop what they were doing and sign because they knew you had to get going. Now you have one person doing the job of three and they are helping customers and on the phone at the same time and you dont dare cut to the front of the line, and if they're on the phone, you can hand the stylus to them, and put the board in front and they still wouldnt sign.Ups can tell drivers to convey a sense of urgency, but at the end it comes down to the customer, ups has to really tread lightly because a customer doesnt have too many choices these days but they do have a choice.
P-man, can you tell everybody when some of these allowances were studied, like selection time, customer time etc, if I could guess, It wouldnt be anywhere close to 2009, does anyone else see a problem with this? And how about the post a while back that said that ie did a time study on a center and many of the routes made up time, and for whatever reason it was thrown out and the original time continued...this seems interesting.
I have been told my sups and mgrs that the allowance is not fair when comparing it to route to route. Im sure some of you have done routes that you thought were easy and make bonus on them, and others are really challenging trying to juggle so much and you were 2 hours over, now when that is happening on a daily basis, there is something much more wrong that a slow driver, or an edd that is off a little. There are reasons that some drivers work like crazy and are an hour over while joe bonuses 2 hours a day like clockwork, and does an easier route.
Finally, one post mentioned production, edd, and telematics are going to be the thing that will decide if we stay ahead of fedex for the next 20 years. I dont think any of these is true, its going to be if ups can lobby to be able to organize fedex...think about that for a second. When this vote in congress happens it is going to be the most important thing to happen in the history of this company, imo, no matter which way the vote goes. It is scary to think about ups holding the short end of the stick on this one. If fedex is able to be organized, it could be the end of fedex like we know it, and basically ups will have won, they will not be able to compete on our level, all of their units will be able to unionize.
I know that many people on here try to rationalize and put ups into a box like other companies, management tries to say that the ups culture, as the way we know it, is a direct relationship to being union and I dont believe this is totally true. I have known others, including family, that have had union shops and there is not even close the amount of drama. This is a VERY DIFFERENT company than others out there, you cannot compare its mgt and hourly employees to other managers and hourly employees to other companies in the world. They aren't rational, they dont seem to make alot of sense, but they are what they are, and we all in our own ways add to that picture, good or bad, bad or good.