Email Idea

[layoutshooter]

I don't know about anyone else but that "electric voice" that FedEx uses to dispatch when you are not on Clink can be very hard to understand. We have two options when waiting for loads. Clink or phone. It would be nice when at home to have a third choice, email. It is easier to read and therefor less chance of mistakes. What do others out there think?

 

[LDB]

I think they should have a system like Panther where you get a text msg on your cell of the load offer details except they should do it correctly unlike Panther who although told over and over how to eliminate useless text and add important useful info never did change the thing that I know of. I've kept a sample on my cell phone just in case anyone would ever listen to good advice.

The load offer is sent at the same time it goes over the QC at Panther and often the cell receives it before the QC does. Also, text messages will go through in marginal areas where the phone won't work for calls so there's less chance of missing an opportunity that way. I'm all for it, especially if they'll accept user input and not just do whatever they think is a good idea.

 

[TeamCaffee]

I like that now you can hear the pickup and delivery city spelled out. I am still debating the email thought. I would much rather be on QC so we can see all the detail but when we cannot you can get a lot of information from the phone call. Going to have to ponder on this more layoutshooter! Always good to be thinking of ways to impove the existing systems.

 

[layoutshooter]

I like that now you can hear the pickup and delivery city spelled out. I am still debating the email thought. I would much rather be on QC so we can see all the detail but when we cannot you can get a lot of information from the phone call. Going to have to ponder on this more layoutshooter! Always good to be thinking of ways to impove the existing systems.

I much prefere to be on Clink as well. I was thinking of this while we are at home or in a motel room. We are not in the truck then and are limited to phone only. The email could have all the same information as the Clink messege. I don't really like sitting out in my truck when I am home!!! LOL!!

 

[piper1]

It's a cool idea but I bet the speed of email sometimes would be a reason the Fed might not like it. Sometimes e-mail just takes to long, would you then have guys complaining about missed loads because AOL or whoever was a bit slow that day and the load took 20 minutes to get to you.

I wish there was a way to get more of the details texted to you or if you had a BlackBerry you could get the info.

It might be a cost saving tho. How much phone time is FX paying for while we endlessly make the VRU repeat the load info while we make our decision?

I think it merits discussion!

 

[layoutshooter]

It's a cool idea but I bet the speed of email sometimes would be a reason the Fed might not like it. Sometimes e-mail just takes to long, would you then have guys complaining about missed loads because AOL or whoever was a bit slow that day and the load took 20 minutes to get to you.

I wish there was a way to get more of the details texted to you or if you had a BlackBerry you could get the info.

It might be a cost saving tho. How much phone time is FX paying for while we endlessly make the VRU repeat the load info while we make our decision?

I think it merits discussion!

Clink is NOT always that fast either. We have the "beep" service on Mrs. Layoutshooter's phone. You know, it beeps to let us know there is an offer at the truck. We have documented several instances where we would get a "beep" on the phone and NOT on the Clink for as long as 23 minutes later. We have also documented the opposite problem, the Clink goes off and the phone does not. Not good. We are still trying to determine if the problem is in our truck or the system. We also are having problems with lack of response on offers. Often we accept an offer and NEVER get an answer, mainly when on the phones. It happened again today. We had to call in to see what the status of the load was. We did not get it.

It is just a suggestion for another option, mainly for at the house or in motels etc. Just something to think about.

 

[piper1]

You get that too eh? I'd say 20% of my loads I don't get a call back saying I got it. After 20 mins passes I will log in to the extranet and find out that way that I got the load. Odd.

Hopefully when FX upgrades the Qualcomm's there will be options opened up!

 

[aileron]

LOS,

I lost a couple of loads because the text on the phone came a lot later than the 10 min allowed. Bothered me a lot. So, I am available only on the phone. Only one time it happened that I did not get a response back from accepting a load opportunity. Called after 15 min and found out that I got the load.

 

[TeamCaffee]

I keep thinking about how this would benefit us. If we were able to get an email message on every load opp that was sent to the truck we would then be able to keep a record of our refusals. Since we can no longer keep track of our refusals on the FCC extra net we are going to start doing this ourselves and the reason that we refused the load.

 

[ATeam]

I keep thinking about how this would benefit us. If we were able to get an email message on every load opp that was sent to the truck we would then be able to keep a record of our refusals. Since we can no longer keep track of our refusals on the FCC extra net we are going to start doing this ourselves and the reason that we refused the load.

Or we can disregard the importance of refusals altogether.

If FDCC can no longer track our acceptance percentages or at least care enough about it to tell us what they are, why should we?

A standard that is not announced has zero effect as a motivator. Contractors have now gone many months without knowing their acceptance percentages. Customers continue to be served. FDCC has not suffered because contractors do not know their acceptance percentages. Why should FDCC and its contractors continue thinking about this statistic at all?

We are not in this business to track statistics. We are in it to make money. Statistics can help us understand certain aspects of the business, but they are not an end in themselves.

Diane and I have never once accepted a load because it will help our acceptance rate. We accept loads because they can be profitably run.

FDCC is not a charitable organization. We have no interest in boosting our acceptance rating to show that we are good contractors. We are good contractors with a good acceptance rating (at least when it was previously known) because a sufficient number of profitable loads are there for us to haul.

FDCC does not need that statistic to identify the bottom-rung contractors who cost the company more than it is worth to keep them around. Time in service, run counts and other information already on hand can be used for that.

By withholding acceptance rates from contractors for many months, FDCC has already demonstrated that the company can function just fine without tracking that info. I suggest they do exactly that; stop tracking contractor load acceptance percentages.

In effect, have they not already done so?

I am open to being educated about acceptance stats. Having now gone several months without knowing what our acceptance percentage is, and finding no one at FDCC who can tell me (I have asked), Diane and I and FDCC seem to be doing just fine without that information.

Regarding the presumed importance of acceptance percentages, what am I missing?

 

[TeamCaffee]

Phil I think I mentioned how it would benefit us in my post. I like to know what our refusals are and why as I can see if we are creating a trend of the loads we refuse beside just low pay. It is information for our own use as I like to know if the long dead head to pickup is often the cause of our refusals. Until FCC fixes their system on refusals I will use my system to keep track of what we are doing.

So you can disregard refusals and I can track refusals and we are both right. FCC does still track refusals but at this time they are jumping through a lot more hoops to get the information.

 

[layoutshooter]

Or we can disregard the importance of refusals altogether.

If FDCC can no longer track our acceptance percentages or at least care enough about it to tell us what they are, why should we?

A standard that is not announced has zero effect as a motivator. Contractors have now gone many months without knowing their acceptance percentages. Customers continue to be served. FDCC has not suffered because contractors do not know their acceptance percentages. Why should FDCC and its contractors continue thinking about this statistic at all?

We are not in this business to track statistics. We are in it to make money. Statistics can help us understand certain aspects of the business, but they are not an end in themselves.

Diane and I have never once accepted a load because it will help our acceptance rate. We accept loads because they can be profitably run.

FDCC is not a charitable organization. We have no interest in boosting our acceptance rating to show that we are good contractors. We are good contractors with a good acceptance rating (at least when it was previously known) because a sufficient number of profitable loads are there for us to haul.

FDCC does not need that statistic to identify the bottom-rung contractors who cost the company more than it is worth to keep them around. Time in service, run counts and other information already on hand can be used for that.

By withholding acceptance rates from contractors for many months, FDCC has already demonstrated that the company can function just fine without tracking that info. I suggest they do exactly that; stop tracking contractor load acceptance percentages.

In effect, have they not already done so?

I am open to being educated about acceptance stats. Having now gone several months without knowing what our acceptance percentage is, and finding no one at FDCC who can tell me (I have asked), Diane and I and FDCC seem to be doing just fine without that information.

Regarding the presumed importance of acceptance percentages, what am I missing?

We are only concerned with IN service, on on-time stats. With the present dispatch system it makes NO sense to keep up aceptance rates. We would go broke if we tried.

 

[ihamner]

Just a thought on this email offer idea:

Email can be seen by people who know what they are doing to hack into systems. The CLink (as I understand it) is secure. Even the government uses something like CLink in dangerous areas where messages can be intercepted.

Although the cell phone messages can also be intercepted they are not as specific as our load information on CLink. I could be way off base on this but I think doing these offers on Email would be a big security issue with our company.

I believe the company uses an IBM (Novell) system and security is a major issue with the "big blue" systems.

 

[layoutshooter]

Just a thought on this email offer idea:

Email can be seen by people who know what they are doing to hack into systems. The CLink (as I understand it) is secure. Even the government uses something like CLink in dangerous areas where messages can be intercepted.

Although the cell phone messages can also be intercepted they are not as specific as our load information on CLink. I could be way off base on this but I think doing these offers on Email would be a big security issue with our company.

I believe the company uses an IBM (Novell) system and security is a major issue with the "big blue" systems.

Never thought of that. I just cannot understand that stupid electric voice.

 

[ATeam]

FCC does still track refusals but at this time they are jumping through a lot more hoops to get the information.

For what purpose do they do this? Why is it worth doing?

I would not have asked before the information became unavailable to us, but finding that FDCC and contractors seem able to live without it, why track it?

 

[ATeam]

It would be nice when at home to have a third choice, email. It is easier to read and therefor less chance of mistakes. What do others out there think?

1. When we are home, we are usually out of service so, except for the day we go back in service, no load offers would be received by any means.

2. When we are home, we are off line more than when we are on the road. E-mail would not be a good way to get info to us.

3. When I am on the computer at home, I am not always logged online. The computer work I do does not always require being online.

4. When we are home, we usually sleep the night through. E-mail messages would be missed.

5. There are still a surprising number of expediters out there that do not use computers. E-mail means nothing to them.

Your complaint seems to be more about the understandability of the computer voice when offers come in by phone. You are not alone in that, as demonstrated by the addition of city name spellings on request. Would you be asking for e-mail notification if you could easily understand the voice? Computer generated voice systems have come a long way in recent years. Perhaps an upgrade is in order.

 

[LDB]

I always set my status to clink off even though I'm in the truck 9x% of the time. I don't want to risk going out for a walk around the lot or inside for a minute and forgetting to switch over and then have to switch back. I know nothing of the complexity of programming it other than once done that's it except for tweeks and upgrades.

A cell SMS text can have 160 characters I believe. In that space you could have pro number, pu date/time, del date/time, city, st, zip (two sets, shipper and consignee), pcs, wt, Y/N (for HM), Y/N (DOD), tot mi., tot pay, and plenty of characters left for whatever else should be included for good decision making and not coming to mind at the moment.

I would much rather have that than an email as my phone is always ready to go and email isn't always an option. Also, as mentioned, sometimes I don't get an email for quite some time after it is sent. It would be available to everyone, even those who don't do computers on the road and it would solve the unintelligible computer voice problem.

 

[nightcreacher]

I always set my clink status to off.Even though it sometimes hard to understand,the phone works the best for me.
As far as refusal status,they need to put in the status of runs accepted that you didnt get,then they can talk about the loads you refused

 

[mhoy40]

i read either in the extranet or in the drivers hand book somewhere they offer text message to your phone or text capable phone device like blackberry and such will go back and try to find it again and let yall know exactly where i saw it, as far as the load thing i dont understand why the big stink about it the only numbers i worry about is the numbers that have dollars sighns in them if it dont pay right we dont tak it anyway not there to win awards there to make a living and get a paycheck.if you been doin it long enough you know where your goin and not goin anyway,besides if you get the award wht do you get a party or something,regardless of what you get i would rather have the good money than a 100 percent acceptance rate,100 percent acceptance only means your doin alot of loads that are maximizing your profit potential.

 

[piper1]

The current text service will only tell you that there is a load offer on the C-Link and what number it is, nothing else.

It also only works if you are "C-Link YES" status.