Are OTR “drop zones” being used much?

Matlack teams busted guts to get any NYC area delivery to our yard way early knowing Central would drop their load and send them on their way somewhere with the longest load on our board.

 

Swift kinda has something like this. But with different intent. If a load is going someplace reasonably close to a terminal or drop yard and the driver gets the trailer in the area early enough, they'll have him drop it at the terminal or drop yard for a local driver to deliver when it is time. Allows the OTR drivers to grab another load without having to wait.

 

When I was with Swift, the OTR Drivers WERE THE LOCAL DRIVERS. Any time they had you TCall a load at a terminal, they would give you a "local load" to get an MT! Jurupa Valley was the WORST. After you delivered the "local load", there was never an MT at the Consignee, and they would send you all over hells half acre in SoCal to find one! It could take HOURS. Thank you for the start in this industry Swift, you fulfilled your end of the deal, I fulfilled mine......... don't miss you much though!

 

Besides maybe a handful of companies around major cities like NY and philly/LA. That's a lot more work than most companies wanna deal with. Gonna cost more to hire those guys and you know they're all about pinching pennies Lol

 

If you read the comments vs the story as written you'll see that the comments don't contradict his opinion at all. The business idea would be a 3rd party setup where drivers just dropped their trailer and picked up another, most companies prefer to have their equipment on their yards. Similar, but enough of a difference to see that it's currently an unlikely even for businesses like this to succeed.

 

Yup....as Brettj mentioned above. Local hourly drivers cost "too much money". Just send those local loads out with the next OTR stiff that shows up!

 

Incorrect. The article is about one specific company, and it doesn't need most companies approval, only a few. And the story certainly isn't "a fantasy creation of someone outside the industry", since it is in reality a story about an actual company with rapid growth and several publicly traded clients.

 

The voices in my head said that might happen, but what do they know?

 

I complained about this when I was OTR. We had a "terminal" in Fontana, but I still wound up driving around unfamiliar streets in LA to deliver the load. It would have been more efficient for a LA native who would know how to get around traffic to deliver the load in a daycab.

They really didn't save money, but they think they did.

 

I have a bunch of trucks doing cross docking, just put a trailer in the slot and pick up another, do it again.