CRETE - A Year in Review

Excited to start with Shaffer next week. Orientation in Lenoir City,TN.

 

In training with them right now. Excellent company. Any questions hit me up. That is where i did my orientation.

 

Are MT's a free-for-all to take? Never done d/h before, so I'm just curious how you can just take any available trailer. Please educate me on this

 

Lets say you have drop and hook. Drop ur trailer where they want then depending if u r picking up load or waiting on next load assignment. Picking up load u take trailer assigned. If waiting pick a trailer that is empty and for shaffer not running. Shaffer can only take shaffer.

 

So, if you've just dropped a trailer and don't v have can preloaded trailer to pick up, you can just pock up any creete trailer and put in a request for a load saying you have an empty trailer.

 

you need to have an mt before you send in your mt-call unless you are already preplaned.

 

Like lars said have to have empty one to get ur next load assignment.

 

The basis of my question is this: you can take any available creete MT when you drop a load/trailer so you can get another load. Find an empty, hook up and go? I just can't believe that creete doesn't assign empty trailer.

The OP had said he takes trailers of the docks that have a green light. Crazy, since I've always worked for companies that always have me live loading and I have the same trailer all the time. Its a very weird concept to me.

 

At most places where we drop/hook you do not take a trlr from the dock unless specifically told to do so and then only with paperwork in hand. Most of the places where we have spot trlrs we can take any MT but there are places that assign them to you. Even Walmarts are different from DC to DC depending upon their system. Some of the Wallies let you take any ol trlr that's MT and others that want you to fetch an MT then let them know which one you got so they can take it out of their system. Still others make you drop your loaded, go to the traffic office and then they will tell you which trlr to get and give you the old inbound paperwork so you know what was in the trlr on the previous run (some places want to know they're not loading food product where something undesirable had been the previous run). The assigning of MT trlr.s is not the decision of Crete but rather the cons. Afterall they are more or less responsiblke for the trlr.s that Crete has left/ leased to them.

It is a rare occasion when you actually drop a loaded trlr and pick up a loaded outbound; ie places like Kelloggs where we both deliver and ship from. I have a theory on this. If a driver brings in a loaded trlr and leaves with a loaded trlr then the customer has nothing to load it's next outbound load onto. Thus Crete may miss an opportunity for a load. So Crete instead will deadhead a trk with an MT trlr just so the customer will have an MT. Yes the customer will...re: should be releasing an MT to that inbound driver. But the next driver coming in will have an MT. There are occasions when the customer will not release an MT to the inbound driver when they have outbound loads that will need an MT. To Crete's thinking it is better to have a potential load (I.E. MT trlr sitting on the customer's lot) than to have a driver drop/hook with loaded trlr.s leaving the customer with nothing to load. I hope this makes sense...it's early.

 

The rule of thumb is kinda like this:
At a Crete yard:
Any MT is free to take, unless of course it is red tagged out of service for some reason.

At a customer:
1) Never take one from a dock unless they tell you that it is OK.
2) If they assign MT's take the assigned one.
3) If they do not assign, I take the one that allows me to get my next load with the least amount of work.