This issue pertains to everyone in the supply chain who interacts with shipping and receiving operations yet the one who ultimately pays the consequence of the failure is the drivers.
About 2 weeks ago a fellow driver received a citation for over $14,000 after following driving directions given to him by the receiver who ordered a heavy load of plate glass.
Naturally, some of you will go on the attack to blame the driver. This is the modern trucking environment, to eat one of your own rather than band together to draw attention to a failure by supply chain personnel who are supposed to provide the ground support that truck drivers require.
It’s not about owning a GPS for trucks and No, it’s not about being tough enough, or smart enough to read a map. That is not the issue and this post is directed at the shipping , receiving, load planning and other ground support involved in freight movement.
Everyone has been lost at one time or another, you know like when you’ve decided to embark on the “Great American Road Trip” , you’ve got the family loaded up in the car full of excitement
until you come to a place you have never been before, you are lost and you need help.
You are out of your element, disoriented, possibly tired and the aggravation may contribute to making other poor judgment calls. It is understandable, it is human.
Finding yourself lost in a 75ft vehicle is part of trucking but it is a failure in the supply chain in my
opinion, it is a time waster. Time is money and if you are wasting my time you are costing me money. I know I am not the only one who feels this way about time on either side of this industry.
Speaking as a person who worked on the air-conditioned side of hospitality logistics for many years I can tell you that this simple detail that is regularly omitted from freight dispatch is infuriating because in other areas of logistics it would not happen. So when I hear executoves say how trucking is really a service industry to drivers, I have to laugh because they surely are not as informed as they could be about how this failed operation internally creates bad service in the field.
Some veteran truckers may shrug and say “Why that’s trucking” and while they understand that in an industry where missed details create more cost and more waste in the form scheduling adjustments
they have come to accept this poor excuse. This at the same time as technology is so advanced.
To a true professional in the supply chain who “Loves Logistics”, clear and concise operations are the name of the game, so why drop the ball in the transportation portion of freight movement?
Accurate directions to the shipper and receiver should be a no-brainer, a supplementary detail included in all booked freight loads due to the sensitive nature of our infrastructure and time constraints for the “Just in Time” (JIT) system which is studied in universities across the land.
What the textbooks do not cover for transportation, marketing and business students are how one segment of the supply chain if often overlooked, the truck driver.
It is the truck driver who transports the raw materials AND the finished products with very little concern to the environment in which they are expected to perform their function in the process.
I surely do not think anyone in supply chain accounting would permit billing instructions to be overlooked to a booked load so why are accurate “Truck Route” directions so difficult for people who push paper for living to manage?
Shippers, Receivers and Carriers place the burden on the individual driver to be on time for loading and unloading appointments but more often than not, no directions accompany a load assignment
with very high expectations for it’s delivery.
It is totally ludicrous to me when I translate this into hospitality logistics.
Imagine this scenario: A trucking executive or supply chain management conference group books a golf resort meeting junket but they are not told where the resort is located nor given proper contact information to call someone for their Saturday afternoon arrival.
Would this be acceptable? Would you want repeat business from this resort? Hardly … but in trucking it is easy to blame the individual driver rather than the internal support who should have properly given the driver the proper tools to complete their tasks.
This sort of scenario just does not happen in other industries but for some reason it is acceptable in freight logistics. Some truck drivers accept it as part of the job despite how technologically advanced the transportation industry has become where tractors and trailers are tracked by satellite.
I remember personally sending directions to my dispatcher so he would update the account when I had to go to a place that had either no directions or wrong directions given in my load assignment. I liked to think my dispatcher would update the system so that the next driver did not have to get lost but unfortunately those attempts to “go the extra mile” were sometimes in vain, even when I made it clear that there was a low bridge in the area or weight restrictions that made it of great importance for our drivers to follow a specific route in and out from that location.
Sometimes these directions were not that easily established, especially when no working phone number was given with the load, or the person who answered the phone could not provide accurate
directions.
This was actually pretty common to have someone from the warehouse facility on the line that could not tell you how to drive there, yet they worked there and drove to that location in some manner or
another each day.
Of course your first thought is “How did you get to work if you do not know how to get to where you are, do you live in the building?” the alternative scenario is the person who does give you directions but they are unaware that big trucks cannot travel on all the same roads as cars.
Anyone who works in or around trucks in any capacity of supply chain management, logistics and transportation of freight SHOULD be educated enough to know that trucks cannot drive on just any road. Anyone who might answer a phone where delivery directions are given should be aware of any restricted truck routes to their location. In the operation of a supply chain this information should be
included in load dispatches in order to prevent damage to public property and infrastructure.
Sally in the office might have had good intentions when she gave directions to the truck driver but now the 100 year old bridge that Paul Revere road over to give Sarah Palin a history lesson has been crushed to smithereens.
Yes, I am being snarky in my remark but this is not a laughing matter if you are a driver who will take the very costly fall for such an error.
When I got a call about this driver who followed the directions from receiver that took
him over a weight restricted roadway in which a city cop spotted him and issued him a $14,605.50 citation, my first thought was how thoughtless supply chain person was who gave the directions.
Common sense would say that a load of glass is ordinarily heavy and a regular occurrence to this facility because they are in the glass business; therefore their location with has a restricted road access should be defined to all of their
truck traffic if they are being responsible to their community.
After all, they are stationary and the truck traffic is not.
The driver followed the directions given by the receiver, a man with a Wife and 5 children to support. In total, 5 officers descended on the driver and promptly set up a mobile scale to determine the weight of the truck.
The glass load is set up in a distinctive manner, an “A” frame shape.
It stands to reason that the city cop observed and recognized that this particular load was a good bet visually to be overweight for this roadway because of the manner the flatbed was tarpped.
I was led to understand that some remarks made while the citation was being issued made the driver to feel targeted as if the roadway was a revenue trap.
Do people in the supply chain understand this at all? Do they realize when they go
off to the water cooler to chat with one another about what was on TV last night that their inattention to details regarding incoming and outcoming truck traffic could adversely affect another persons livilehood?
The receiver is not obligated to pay for this citation, nor is the driver’s employer. When the drivers Wife called regarding the incident the person who answered the phone said “Oh, it happens all the time”!
Like WOW!, they know and they continue to disperse the wrong directions to the
people who deliver their raw materials?
Just for the heck of it I looked up this particular town to see if it was listed on
any “speed trap” websites and I did indeed find it listed as having known speed traps for vehicles. It does not list truck specific information though.
Understand that I am not condoning that a driver should not do their part by cross-checking
directions but let’s deal with reality; truck drivers are often targets and assumed to have deep pockets or at least the carriers they work for.
People in the transportation sector should be made aware how important accurate shipping and receiving directions are to an individual. This should have not occurred. It should not “happen all the time”.
Shipping and receiving facilities who order heavily loaded trucks to and from their locations that have restricted road access should step up their game.
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