Question About Operations

What do you mean the larger your fleet is?

You looking at something like 100 truck operation?

 

It really depends on your operation. Are you running straight customers or load board. Or a combination of both. When we ran 25 trucks we had one woman that did safety and billing and then we had one guy that looked for loads and did permits and then we had one guy that did dispatch. The dispatch guy would also double up looking for loads and calling customers.

 

Well... using Dowdy's 200+ trucks as a example.

This is 1998 mind you. Arkansas. He has a three story office building. And a seperate shop building complete with a library of binders for every truck and trailer he owns. There is a third building that used to accomodate orienations and what not. Thats a spare building.

There is big chief in the top office. His operations manager is next man down the totem pole. He sits with about I think two or three night dispatchers in their own special room and about 10 dispatchers. Each dispatcher I think has 20 drivers give or take. Each of those 20 drivers are further divided into say the top 5 wartime hell and high water drivers you put on loads that are existential problems to behold. Nothing but the very best people. Two of those 5 you keep in a glass box with a hammer that says break in case of emergency and do not let them out with a load without making sure they know where, when, how, why and what. FIRST. You wont see them again until they show up empty. DO NOT ask them questions. What you don't know means the company will do well.

There is about 10 drivers in the middle. They get loads, they get empty, sun rises in the east travels to the west and sets as sure as there is a living God who made the earth, heaven and hell and all in it. Dependable. No fuss. Every disaptchers joy and delight. As parents blessed with obedient children.

There is the bottom 5. You keep staffers on hand in the downstairs office. Those 5 are regularly brought in to be roped, saddle broke again, retrained, reeducated and otherwise worked on as projects. Teetering on failure. or like El Toro in Bugs Bunny just incorrigable. You dispose of them.

On the bottom floor you have the wee lady, drug test time. She takes care of EVERYTHING wee wee. Anything else is BS and a waste of her time. There is a safety suit. he prowls the property and scans the trucks remotely to see if there is a problem. He keeps a heavy on the leash who asks questions in a reasonable way and if served BS in return as the bad driver tries to wriggle out of punishment for braking too hard... then the yelling and abuses start. It may or may not decide that drivers last employed day.

There are 4 people who takes care of OSD, Logbooks, Bills of lading and fuel.

One more takes care of permits, tags, registration, alcohol licensing and any special nicky picky permits, weights and so on.

Two labor around the corner in mounds of who has borrowed too many comchecks against their paychecks. The rest of the pay goes out direct deposit. Many are content with their daily bread. And finally one young college girl. FAST as a whip SHARP mentally and verbally and deals with all incoming phone calls and people coming to the front door at all hours.

Uh, how do I find orien...

Right over there sir, welcome.

Der... who is perm...

That door there.

etc. All day questions upon questions. Eventually it becomes rote and she does it automatically while doing something else of greater interest with the hands to pass the day until date night later.

after all that, you still have a wire crawler who replace busted keyboards, burnt computers, fried phone systems or no power etc. He slithers from desk to desk almost as a cringing shadow of what he is meant to be in life. Poor thing. Ask him anything at all not related to electronics and his BP spikes to stroke levels while the beads roll down his face.

There is a house cat somewhere in the building. Its not exactly... allowed, but someone somewhere somehow in someway takes care of nice kitty. If kitty really likes you you feel it wrap around your boot, stretch to sharpen claws on your chain drive wallet....

Takes the tension right out of you. Because you forgot what were mad about just then.

Aw Kitty.

They have a way of doing that.... Ignore everyone and rub the one who is gots a problem before it really became a problem.

You finally have someone somewhere in the outfit who minds everything coming and going. This one is the big money CFO or whatever they call them. He dreams of billions while stressing over millions going out and coming in per month.

Finally deep somewhere in a office you never see, stained with smoke, coffee spills and roaring with profanity like a zoo lion exhibit who is past meal time... are those engaged in gathering sales... er freight for the 200 or so drivers and dispatchers waiting on them up stairs and all over the USA< Canda and mexico waiting on them for a load.

I think they used to get a large box of maalox and a box of borax and probably antiacids as well as a few other things to calm the stress down.

Somewhere near the operations manager hovers the shop boss.

Er, billy bob redlined his jakes too long, can we fix that today right quick?

Shop boss rolls eyes and says as if. AGAIN?! grumbles, thinks and stares at the ceiling and some how like Star Trek's Scotty sure you bet. No problem one engine coming up. Where you want it?

That one person knows in his elephantine mine everything little object on the property down to the last socket.

Just stay quiet and let him think. He'll come around soon enough.

Thats a trucking company in a nutshell.

Oh I left out the recruiter and his lackey the orientation showboat barker.

The stream of verbal BS and forms of flattery roll out of that little classroom in one corner of the building.

The OM road test will sort out the good from the bad.

 

Wow. Just wow.

 

One good thing about the two big customers we worked for is they paid weekly. We started with six trucks of our own and two leased on trucks. About a year later we bought six more and I think one or two leased on o/o . Third year two more of our own than over a few months five or six more o/o’s. I had growing pains the hole time , robbing from peter to pay Paul. Took me 12 years to finally get to a spot where I was pretty much running on my own money with a small line of credit. But I started with so much debt with all the trucks and around thirty trailers. Also I was flying by the seat. I had grew up in a trucking family but nobody had ever had more than the truck they drove. I look back now and all I can say was it was a miracle I made it this far.

 

Compliance.

 

Payroll takes a month to generate, that means you have to have the capital to hold you over and pay the drivers.

My hr is easy to do. The safety girl take care of safety and logs. The drug testing is outsourced as are the intake and background checks. My manager or I do the interviews, contract explanation is now done by my manager exclusively. Book keeping is done by the bookkeeper.

I have pushed hard to use technology among all of us.