PRE-PLANNING

Here is the crazy thing about planning drivers out ahead of time and dispatching  weeks in advance.

When I started here decades ago we would only give a driver his load information 48-24 hours ahead.
We never pre-planned because we wanted and needed the option to change up just in case.

I lobbied to change that saying that drivers should know as much in advance as possible what plans we have so that they can plan their own lives. Maybe stay home another day or let the wife and kids know so that they can make plans.
I saw it, and still see it as a huge plus for a driver on the road.

Of coarse the big problem with that is as I have explained in past blogs we DO have to change up at times.
And because we want the drivers to know in advance what we have planned when we now change it we now are the "bad guys".
Most drivers feel once we plan it on them that it is set in stone and it is now "their" tonnage.
We do our absolute best to do just that, we know the advantage of pre-planning. After all I was the one that lobbied for it years ago.

When we reshuffle the deck because of unforeseen circumstances we do so knowing that if we leave  a job on the street not only is it morally wrong it will cost us moves in the long run.
Moves that we will need to dispatch to those very same drivers that are upset that we are changing their loads.

Everything we get is predicated on surveys and customers satisfaction and we need to have good scores to be offered work YEAR ROUND.

MR Arpin would always tell me it is not so much what we do in the two - three months in the summer it is what we do the other 9-10 months.

We change things to cover work, to help our customers and to protect our scores so we can have work for drivers and agents year round.

Like I have said- WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER-