Truckload Carriers Detail Loading Dock Problems, Seek Cooperation for Solutions

In an educational effort aimed at improving motor carrier productivity at shipping and receiving docks, the Truckload Carriers Association formed its Just-In-Time-To-Wait Committee. This ad hoc group drawn from the full membership of the association plus volunteers from shippers and receivers has been at work for two years.

In the first year, the committee was headed by John Ameling, president of KAT Inc, a refrigerated carrier in Chesterton, Indiana. Since March 2000, Richard Durst, president of Arctic Express in Hilliard, Ohio, has been chairman. In the past year, the committee has presented at least seven panel discussions to industry organizations such as the National Industrial Transportation League and the Food Distributors International. These presentations usually include a shipper or receiver, a motor carrier representative, and a driver who details the actual environment on shipping and receiving docks.

"Drivers are particularly effective at painting a vivid picture of the waiting situation at shippers and receivers," says Robert Rothstein, general counsel for TCA. "We've had good response from the presentations made by Ron Presley, a driver for M S Carriers and a member of America's Roadteam. He has 27 years of experience and has logged more than 3.1 million accident-free miles."

Publications Advocate Change In addition to meetings with others in the supply chain, TCA has produced a number of pamphlets including a major study conducted by Mercer Management Consulting. The association also has developed a Voluntary Guide to Good Business Relations. The guide was developed in cooperation with the NIT League and has been distributed to shippers, carriers, and receivers as well as drivers.

The association attempts to show that distribution productivity is already subject to a number of factors that add to costs for every party in the chain. Motor carriers face a serious shortage of qualified drivers. This shortage is severe enough to idle up to 10% of the national truckload fleet at any given time. New regulations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration concerning the use of forklifts and other powered materials handling equipment are reducing dock productivity. In addition, proposed OSHA ergonomics regulations could add significantly to the time taken for drivers or unloading crews to handle freight. New hours of service regulations for truck drivers have the potential to lower motor carrier capacity by reducing the number of hours drivers can operate their vehicles.

If the new hours of service rules go into effect, the industry will need 180,000 new drivers in addition to the more than 80,000 drivers a year it must recruit to make up the current shortage, TCA representatives say. Congress has passed legislation to stall the new hours of service rules, but this is a moratorium for 12 months pending more study, not the total recall of the regulations that many carriers and distribution spokesmen want.

Without significant alteration, the new hours of service regulations will exacerbate an already serious problem, TCA says. Drivers for refrigerated carriers spend an average of 44 hours a week on the job doing tasks other than driving. Although dry van carriers are more efficient at getting trucks back under load after delivery, their drivers spend about 34 hours a week waiting and loading or unloading. If this time is considered on-duty, many drivers will not be able to drive at all on some days.

In the food supply chain, drivers feel as though waiting is what they do most, Durst says. "They wait in cages; they wait in muddy lots; they wait in rooms without access to toilet facilities, food, or telephones. Some receivers make drivers wait in secure rooms when warehouse staff is on break. That makes no sense. The driver has just been on the road alone with a full load of product. If the driver did not steal while on the road, why should we believe that theft is likely during delivery?"

Drivers will jump through hoops to provide good service to receivers that value their time, he says. They love going to warehouses that treat them well and that work to get them back on the road.

Wasted Assets Durst addresses the waiting and unloading problem in concrete terms. "If I have ever seen an abusive waste of an asset worth $140,000 - the cost of a tractor and refrigerated trailer - it would be watching that asset sit still for eight hours while a driver takes product off 24 standard pallets and stacks it on 150 smaller pallets," he says. "My best hope of keeping the cost of service low is to free up my assets to haul more freight."

He also confronts the driver shortage: "I'm not convinced that there is a shortage of drivers, but there is a real poor utilization of drivers. The distribution chain does not need any more equipment, but it does need to utilize the assets we already have in the system."

Jeff Dahlgren, manager, motor transportation for Ralston Purina Company, is a shipper representative working with TCA to solve productivity problems. He says that better transportation capacity utilization is in the best interests of the entire distribution chain - shippers, carriers, and receivers. Improving that utilization will take the combined effort of all these parties. For instance, shippers that encourage carriers to drop trailers for loading by shipper personnel can help reduce driver waiting from seven to 10 hours to under one hour in many cases. If a drop-trailer program is well organized, a driver should be able to leave an empty trailer and hook up a loaded trailer in less than half an hour, he says.

Drop trailers also help solve problems caused by trucks not arriving on time or not showing at all. If a warehouse must wait on a trailer to arrive, a no-show is extremely disruptive, Dahlgren says. However, if trailers are available in the drop yard, the warehouse can continue to work on a smooth schedule whether the tractor arrives on time or not.

Shippers such as Ralston Purina also can improve distribution chain efficiency by using a small group of core carriers. Relying on a small number of carriers minimizes the number of different organizations serving any single destination. This allows carrier management and drivers to develop relationships with receiver personnel.

Dahlgren suggests that realistic pickup allowance rates from shippers provide an incentive for receivers to institute programs such as drop trailers at distribution centers. These pickup allowances should apply to third party carriers or to the receiver's fleet. In addition, shippers should develop a range of service and pricing options for customers so that receivers can support improvements in dock efficiency. Pricing options are a particularly rich source for improving distribution efficiency, because few manufacturers supplying grocery and foodservice distributors currently offer menu pricing, he says.

Demand Reforms Dahlgren says receivers should demand that shippers institute all these reforms. Every one of them has the potential for distribution chain savings. In particular, receivers should demand menu pricing to ensure that they are not spending money to subsidize the inefficient practices of their competitors, he says.

Carriers need to participate in improving dock efficiency, Dahlgren says. The first step would be for carriers to unbundle their pricing so that those paying the bills understand the true cost of moving freight. Waiting and unloading have an associated cost. The waiting and unloading problem cannot be corrected until those costs are understood, he says.

Obviously drop trailers are a cost to every party involved. To make drop trailer programs work, carriers must purchase more trailers than can be used at any given time. This is a particular problem for refrigerated carriers whose trailers are so expensive. A dry van carrier can purchase almost three trailers for the price of a single refrigerated van. Drop trailer programs are not free to shippers and receivers either. They must provide real estate and security for drop yards, spotting equipment for moving trailers, and labor for loading and unloading.

Purina Follows Guidelines Ralston Purina ships truckload freight from 10 distribution centers. This freight - pet food and animal litter - is palletized for easy handling, Dahlgren says. The company has drop trailer facilities at all its shipping locations. These drop yards are available to carriers 24 hours, seven days a week. The company also has instituted the other programs that Dahlgren advocates, including pricing options that address loading and unloading costs at the receiver as well an incentive program to encourage receivers to use drop trailers. Ralston Purina is a strong believer in core carriers. More than 95% of the company's freight moves with its core carriers. The program assigns a single primary carrier and sometimes a secondary carrier to each customer, he says.

In addition, customer pickup plays an important role at Ralston Purina with 50% to 75% of all shipments handled by customer fleets or carriers selected by the customer, Dahlgren says. These fleets have the same access to trailer drop lots as Ralston core carriers.

Drivers hate waiting, especially when they arrive on time as instructed by the shipper, Ron Presley says. The driver is responsible for meeting appointments, but when the warehouse is not ready for the load, the driver's responsibility should end at check-in time, he says.

Drivers Understand Presley says that drivers understand when they are being treated poorly, and they communicate among themselves about particular receiving locations. They know which receivers are the most difficult. "They know it before the trip starts, and they have plenty of time to stew about problems they know are coming," he says. "On the other hand, a driver who knows to expect good treatment at a receiving dock usually arrives with paperwork ready and an otherwise cooperative attitude.

"The difference between poor treatment and unavoidable delay is usually simple communication. Poor treatment is arriving on time and being told to wait for a call on the radio. Good communication is having a delay situation explained, being told to get some rest, and that someone from the warehouse will wake you up when a door is available."

Another good solution for drivers is being adopted from the restaurant industry. Many popular restaurants now issue customers a vibrating pager to announce that a table is ready. A few receivers have taken the same approach, giving drivers a pager with a range of about half a mile. With that device, the driver can rest without being subject to all the chatter on a CB radio and still be notified when the warehouse has a door ready.

Survivors Must Change Operating practices are changing rapidly in the food distribution industry. Survivors in this new environment will be the shippers, carriers, and receivers who embrace the changes, Durst says. "Changes are not made just because they are nice to have," he says. "Wholesale grocers and retail chains make changes in their receiving and warehouse practices because those changes give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The momentum for change is increasing. The choice is to join the change or watch it pass by."

A major receiver is an example of this, Durst says. "We haul a lot of produce for this customer. In the past, they were difficult to serve and drivers did not want to go there. Today, that receiver has made a commitment to us and to our drivers to have the load on the dock, paperwork signed, and the driver released within one hour. The result is lower inventory, faster movement of product through the warehouse, and reduced cost of goods at retail."

In the past, members of the supply chain were preoccupied with cutting only their own costs, Durst says. Today, competitive advantage rests with those who work to cut costs throughout the chain, because reducing cost for vendors and carriers allows a wholesaler or chain operator to become more efficient and reduce the total price of getting goods to the consumer.

"Although I may not always be treated as such, I am your partner in this business, and so are my drivers," Durst tells shippers and receivers. "And quite frankly, drivers are the key component to what makes my company and my customers' businesses work."

Many shippers and receivers have grasped the fact that business relationships in the supply chain must change, Durst says. When the changes are made, every one in the chain gains. Shippers and receivers gain the efficiency of using their warehouse doors more often. The delivered cost of product drops, and motor carrier drivers can stop unloading and segregating freight, he says.