How many of you logistics guys manage or deal closely with the actual fleet? Was hired for a defacto fleet manager position a few months ago. Zero experience.
Use to deal with our Fleet a lot until they finally hired a Fleet Manager. He had some experience and was a driver for us.
I've managed fleet from the GM level. Whatever your company is doing for compliance isn't enough. I'd start by researching what a DOT Audit consists of and start building processes around that. God help you if your HR staff and hiring practices aren't any good because hiring and staffing drivers is probably the most miserable part of a career in logistics. Pray daily for the advancement of driverless transportation and buy that family pack of magnums from Costco....... You can hit me up with any specifics and I'll do my best to help.
This thread is relevant to my interests. My department manager just recommended I investigate our Lean Process team openings. Completey different area of our business, and it's been over 10 years since I handled anything even close to this (16+ since college). Transportation (daily local, 30 facilities, 12-110 drivers/facility) and operations analysis. Travel time, but not sure how much. Going to job shadow sometime in the next week and just ordered a few books from amazon to read up. As of now, it's over my head. I think I'm wanted more for my management and presentation abilities, since projects come directly from our exec team and results are presented directly to them.
I'll have to look planned to read one yesterday and today, but life happened and my dog died so I've been out of it.
Lean Six Sigma Logistics is a very quick, easy to read, and concise book. It may not apply as well to your situation, but I enjoyed it.
slogan119 following up on Lean Six Sigma Logistics, after a quick Google I found a free online copy. Chapter 20 (p201) is where it actually gets into the meat of process improvement projects and tools. Everything leading up to that is more conceptual. https://mynotesonsystemicthinking.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/lean-six-sigma-logistics.pdf
So we cancelled, well rescheduled about seven incoming loads last week. Then we get back to work Saturday right as Matthew hits our main DC in Savannah. So we have had three deliveries in 3 days. We average 21 per week at this time of the year. This will be hell in about three days. I know you guys must be having so much fun.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/17/self-driving-trucks-impact-on-drivers-jobs-us Spoiler Driverless trucks will be safer and cheaper than their human-controlled counterparts, but that doesn’t mean America’s 3.5 million professional truck drivers are giving up to the machines without a fight. Across the US, truckers collectively haul more than 10bn tons of freight each year, but it’s a tough job – the hours are long and lonely, the pay is low and the lifestyle is sedentary. In many ways it’s a job ripe for disruption; robots v truckers. “Picture the taxi drivers around the world acting in response to Uber,” says Andy Stern, the former former president of the Service Employees International Union, referring to protests and violence that erupted in many cities as the $62.5bn Silicon Valley on-demand ride-hailing firm challenged conventional, regulated taxis. “Truck drivers will follow a similar pattern,” says Stern. “There will be disruption in different places. You can imagine people ringing state capitals with their trucks.” Much has been written about the advent of the driverless car, with rival versions being developed by Google, Uber and Tesla, yet driverless trucks are likely to roll out at scale much sooner. “Individuals can make their own choices about whether they want to get into a driverless car or taxi, but labour-saving technology will be deployed by businesses much quicker,” explains Stern, whose book Raising the Floor explores the need for a universal basic income as technology replaces jobs. Mining giant Rio Tinto already uses 45 240-ton driverless trucks to move iron ore in two Australian mines, saying it is cheaper and safer than using human drivers. Now the race is on to put driverless trucks on public roads. In May 2015, the first self-driving truck hit the American road in the state of Nevada, and there have been several tests around the world since then including a convoy that drove across Europe to the port of Rotterdam in April. That convoy used a new automated driving technology called platooning, which connects trucks using Wi-Fi, sensors, GPS and cameras. The leading vehicle dictates speed and direction, while the rest automatically steer, speed up and slow down in close convoy. In San Francisco, former Googlers have launched a startup called Otto, which promises to retrofit vehicles with driverless capabilities for just $30,000. The average trucker’s wage is around $40,000 per year. ‘Strong undercurrent of denial’ Despite these developments, the trucking industry plays down the threat of disruption, arguing that people will still be needed behind the wheel for complex manoeuvres and oversight. “You are not going to see a truck without a driver in it for a long time,” says Ted Scott from the American Trucking Associations. “The human being is an excellent driver 99.9% of the time. It’s just a tiny instance every now and then that causes a problem. Computers break down more than that.” 34% of operational costs per mile, Morgan Stanley conservatively estimates that the freight industry could save as $168bn annually by harnessing autonomous technology – $70bn of which would come from reducing staff. In addition to cost savings, fleets of automated trucks could save lives. Crashes involving large trucks killed 3,903 people in the US in 2014, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and a further 110,000 people were injured. More than 90% of the accidents were caused at least in part by driver error. What next for drivers? Where does this leave the 3.5 million truckers whose livelihoods depend on the need for a human behind the wheel? And what of the millions more whose livelihoods depend on the truckers coming up and down the country, stopping for food, drinks and sleep? “It’s going to be a huge problem,” says Stern, pointing out that unlike the steel and automotive industries, trucking is not concentrated to a few regions. “It’s the largest job in 29 states.” Even if just a small percentage of these jobs evaporate, there could be trouble. Elitzer points out that truckers are already complaining that companies are offering insufficient wages as salaries haven’t kept up with rises in living costs – even though there’s a shortfall of 30,000 truck drivers in the US. “A real wage decrease has occurred even when these companies can’t find enough people to drive trucks. What happens if even 10-20% of jobs are reduced by fully automated driverless trucks? That’s what worries many drivers,” he says. France over employment law reforms in May, which has seen lorry drivers block refineries and fuel depots, causing a widespread chaos. These efforts will, however, ultimately be futile, he believes. “We’ve seen intense protests like Occupy Wall Street and the anti-war movement, but eventually the world moves on and taxi drivers become Uber drivers.” The shift will lead to a critical discussion about employment, welfare and universal income. “It’s going to be the tipping point of when politicians are going to start talking about how technology is disrupting jobs in our country,” says Stern. But trucking is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re seeing automation of labor across every industry, including manufacturing, wealth management and medicine. GDP is rising but no longer producing wage growth. We’re heading towards mass unemployment at the hands of technology. “There are all the warning signs that a tsunami is coming. People are putting up sandbags by going to get a college education or a skill. That might be fine when there’s a storm coming, but when there are 30ft waves, sandbags aren’t going to save you any more,” says Stern. When the tsunami hits, the wealth will need to be redistributed through something like a universal basic income, or the disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” will create enormous social friction. “From a business person’s perspective it’s about risk management. Do you want to ride around in an armored car and have guards with you? Do you want the Hunger Games? Or do you want a more fair and just society?” says Stern. To those who believe it won’t happen to their industry or company, Stern has these words of comfort: “Maybe they are right. But when you look at the mining trucks on the roads or the convoy driving across Europe, I wouldn’t bet against it.” This will be the greatest day of my life. Truckers make a great contribution to society by delivering our stuff for low pay and long hours. But damn, between the meth, the complaining, not showing up for work, abandoning their rigs on the side of the road instead of quitting like normal people, and the general fuckery that goes on with the transportation industry, I can't wait. I'm sure there will be a place for the good drivers (which there are a lot of good people driving trucks) in the network and the rest of them can get on welfare and disability and as far as possible away from me.
You don't think they'll find a way to automate dispatch? Start climbing that ladder homeboy it's coming for OPs personnel too.
I'm still skeptical that these automated fleets are going to happen as fast people are saying. Seems like the feds would have to see a ton of safety data before they felt comfortable with automated 18-wheelers all over the roads. I'm probably wrong but I'm going to stay skeptical.
Autonomous driving will affect the next generation more than our generation. Next-gen dispatch will be programmers rather than dispatch.
Going live on a new inventory/dispatch system Nov, 1st been a shit storm so far. Moving on from the archiac smart term to Trinium... Would be awesome if 70% of our ops team wasn't 40+ Whammy Business pray your drivers aren't owner ops. I deal with drivers directly every day as well, feel free to ask questions, I know others probably have more experience but I'd be glad to help. Hope you are good at saying no to bullshit
Basically spent the first six years or so of my career managing an internal fleet. Last two jobs have been using outside carriers. I don't think I could ever go back to the bullshit of an internal one.
Mine is a different situation than just about every other poster in this thread. I work for a state agency in Florida, so we're not talking about truck drivers and long-haul trucks. Ninety percent of our fleet is standard sedans, SUVs and light-duty trucks. There's really very little logistics and way more just making sure shit is accounted for. We've surprisingly got a pretty good handle on where the 1100 vehicles in our fleet are. The bulk of my issues are convincing the powers that be to spend money so we can get 20-year-old, 175,000- mile vehicles out of our fleet.
Any other books y'all would recommend or have found useful? Kept some of my SCM/logistics text books from school but looking for some more to read up on to stay fresh. Been putting off tackling my resume (haven't updated since college) but am looking to get out of OPs at my trucking company sometime soon. From what I've heard from others ITT/friends/other terminals in our company I am a lucky SOB for only dealing with two owner ops and damn good drivers (avg driver employment is around 10 years). As I write this phone and internet went down. Hell yeah Friday
I can share my resume with you that landed me this gig. I had a company take all my logistics/materials experience and write a hell of a resume out of it. Again, if you see anything here you are interested in let me know.
Also, we got our diagnostic tests for the CPSM course. Haven't looked at it yet but I'm sure I'll bomb parts of it.
So I need to come up with a monthly audit SOW for our repair depots based off our transportation SOWs. I've never done something like this so it should be fun.
CASS September report and freight indices came out today. http://www.cassinfo.com/Transportat...Supply-Chain-Analysis/Cass-Freight-Index.aspx Highlight: "After offering a glimmer of 'less bad' hope in August (only down 1.1% YoY and up 0.4% sequentially), the CASS freight index shipments data in September disappointed, providing hindsight that August only gave us 'false hope'. September data is once again signaling that overall shipment volumes (and pricing) continued to be weak in most modes, with increased levels of volatility as all levels of supply chain (manufacturing, wholesale, retail) continue to try and work down inventory levels. ... Bottom line, the Industrial Recession in the U.S. that began in March of 2015 continues to weigh on overall volumes." Other takeaways: Volumes/consumer demand continues to soften. Linehaul pricing is forecasted at (-3% to 1%) growth through mid-2017. E-commerce continues to be the main area of growth in the freight market.
September's volume is down 3.5% YoY for comparison against August's numbers (1.1% decrease YoY stated above).
Some fucker put the bug in one of our VP's ear that we could save 500k year in parts shipping by going all ground instead of a combo of 2nd day air and ground. Gahhhh can't believe they did that without talking to you know, the people that control transportation costs first.
Our retail team wanted me to provide potential cost impact if their Canadian customers that filed claims on TVs sent the TVs to a depot in Canada for repair instead of in-home service. So I spent the last week working with our freight auditor on all that. Sent them a high level summary. They respond back with "well what if we send them to our depot in Buffalo, NY for repair". My director who before being promoted was the sr. manager for international transportation here just :yaofaced: the fuck out of that. Like yea you want to ship a TV that costs less than 1K to buyout, internationally then pay whatever the repair cost is and send the TV back again.
So took over some new Parcel/LTL business from my customer and my main contact keeps using the term "Expedite" but I don't think she knows that that means.
"why is it so expensive to expedite 5 little items? We need it to be delivered the cheapest way. We very rarely need anything next day delivery."
Trying my best not to sound like an ass while trying to explain to this guy that he then doesn't need an "expedite" and he needs to stop using that term.
Posted all 87 jobs we have open in the job's thread. Not all are logistics related but there are quite a few there.
I really didn't look when I posted but most of our jobs in any field are going to be in the Nashville area as that's where we are HQ'd.
60 out of the 88 we have posted are in TN. You can also look at asurion.com for any jobs that weren't posted internally.