Dealing With Dispatch

I feel your pain- this is an epidemic at my company. We run semi local 20-40 stop routes, most being once a month, with about 4000 accounts in our service area. There are a handful of drivers, and your daily route is luck of the draw- you don't always get the same one- just whatever management cluelessly assigns to you that day. Its a real cluster f.

To compound the problem, they are notorious for just making up missing or incorrect customer info. I have personally corrected several hundred mistakes on the manifest, only to have it ignored and left incorrect. I also made a comprehensive list of incorrect customer info for management, only to have it also ignored.

Some notable examples of problems this has caused us are: Being sent to a account that we no longer service over 20 times over the course of a year and a half. Also, been sent to accounts being serviced by a new company so many times that they threatened to call the police if we came again.

The problem is the customer told me not to come back, but due to the haphazard routing, the next driver that get this account that shouldn't exist on his route doesn't know, or the same driver gets it and can't remember he's not supposed to be there, or he simply gives the company the benefit of the doubt and goes back.

I have been forbidden to return to the local airport (IAH) because of this, yet it still shows up on my route.

I would guess about 30% of our customers phone numbers have been completely pulled out of the office workers' #####. I could go on.

Years of enduring this has caused drivers to just not give a #### about anything, which is bad for business, but I guess that's the nature of the beast.

 

I heard KB is opening another building next to the term in South Sioux next month.Where orientation drug tests ect ect will be done and also heard there will be a simulator which the drivers have to pass before taking the road test,is any of that true?If so kb will have a tougher time hireing drivers if they have to pass the simulator first.

 

If many drivers experience the same problem, but management "hasn't heard anyone complain", perhaps an old fashioned petition might be in order. Maybe have drivers list times, places, and dispatches where they've had problems. Dump that in managent's lap, with the attitude that as a TEAM we are trying to give the best service possible "where the rubber meets the road".

Then they can't hide behind the "nobody else has a problem" excuse.

 

Whenever I get into a little spat with "the office" over something, I try not to get too worked up over it. I understand that their job is to push for maximum time use efficiency to boost the bottom line and that sometimes this will put them and I at odds when they go over-promising to a broker or customer and 100 mph dispatching a trip. I can pencil out a trip plan just as well as they can and frankly know the job and how it goes a little better than some chick sitting in an office who's never been out there in a truck before. I'll give them fair warning if I think they're out to lunch on something and then it happens how it happens and I don't lose too much sleep over it. Ultimately I dictate what happens because I'm the one doing the driving and I'm the one who knows the HOS rules. Whatever ####amamie plan and timeline they cook up is merely a suggestion until I run it through my reality filter.