Schneider box planner will answer your questions...

Are you curious about why the Schneider box team does what it does?

Are you, were you, a driver that got frustrated over empty searches and wanted to know what the heck box was thinking?

I'll try to pop on and answer.

(box is responsible for empty trailers, not loads)

I am not here under Schneider guidance... I am curious to see what happens.



Feel free to private message me if you wish with questions

 

Originally the box team wasn't what it is now.

At one time the driver leaders actually picked box locations. Another time drivers could pick locations via Qualcomm.

It was a chaotic process to fill locations and get trailers switched out. So the box team was created around that time to be dedicated to just empty trailers. Someone stepped up and took over how box would do their daily tasks and driver leaders, and drivers, would lose their ability to decide how to get drivers and customers trailers.

They pulled operations out of specific operating centers and put them all in Green Bay. Including area planning.

They associated markets to box team planners and coordinators to help find empties that are broken or costumer behavior issues.

Before the current box team - simply put = too many hands on the shipment thus confusing drivers. It's still a current issue but far less than what it was when I joined box years ago.

Hope that's at least a little bit informational

 

This is a lot to type about and hopefully my thumbs don't fall off!

Ok part one to this. And trust me I know the pain of coming in the morning to find support shift sending locations that are utterly useless for empties and EVEN HAVE NOTES on these locations to avoid them in the planning program. It has bee brought up for years yet they do it...

Why? If your in a market that it literally awful for trailers we have to decide 1) Send you far out of route for a good location (like really far) 2) Test the immediate locations and roll the dice.

Unfortunately it comes down to rolling the dice a lot.

And yes I do know that ic/oo thinks box does it on purpose. We do not, we do have our own metrics. We try to do the least out of route but sometimes it comes down customer behavior. Which sucks, oh I know.

I'll give you an example that just happened and irritated a lot of us.

We get contacted by customer service that a location wants their trailers removed. However I know for a FACT that this location is the most painful location I currently have in terms of giving away empties. Every day I have to get trailer exceptions that this location won't release... But customer service says they will. This happens a lot where drivers arrive and they do not release. Of course it's frustrating. I just wasted drivers time!

Then I have to escalate it with cs and my manager, which takes more time to waste! I won't make drivers wait on that, huge waste of time that you need. Yet that doesn't mean I'm removing the next driver quite yet. I have hope that CS gets their act together before the next driver. This could be a really awful market for equipment and I don't have other options.

Customer service says the location will release, use so and so's name who is on location.

Next driver says the guard refuses to cooperate.

CS says get the name of the guard.

Of course his name is "Guard"....

CS says hold on...

10 minutes go by... Ok that's long enough and I send this driver elsewhere but I don't want to pull all others off yet....

Next driver arrives. Says the guard actually told them to take TA... which is empty.

Driver hooks up...

Now the yard jockey says NOPE! I need this for loading and refuses to give another empty.

By now I'm pulling my hair out.
And I guess CS says they are doing that to but I never believe that.

However finally cs gets through to the location and empties are released...

For that day...

The next day might as well hit reset.

Unfortunately this is how it is with so many locations. It doesn't matter that our name is on the trailer, it only matters if the entire location actually tells the right people. Which never happens and drivers are wasted time which sucks.

Part 2

Why do we send you known trailer #s when you submitted an exception?

If you send in "no empties at location" we are going to check what we see in the system and if we see empties we are going to assign you those trailers because we see them as empty.

Now if the customer is refusing to release then we need to know that which is why drivers need to send in "Location inaccessible / not releasing."

Unfortunately if the customer tells you they have none and we see them and you send in "no empties..." because the location says they have none, we don't know that which is why ultimately "location inaccessible" is the recommended option.

Schneider is testing the option for drivers, company not owner ops, to call us directly and tell us these things. It's only currently being tested out of 2 OCs. And to be honest, that's a lot of drivers calling us lol!!! This allows us the information that we are not getting or your driver leader isn't telling us.

It is unfortunate that the answer that their is a disconnect between us and drivers.

Their is also an issue now, that they are trying to fix, that trailers are flipping to empty status before unloading. And this really doesn't help us.

They are looking into new sensors for trailers and are testing them now in different trailers.

We don't really second guess, it's just the lack of information in front of us unfortunately.

Hoped that help explain something! I need to give my thumbs a break lol!