Zip codes do not cross state and county lines, yet these load boards do, even though they are based on Zip Codes that don't. I'm confused.
How can you tell which load board town-x is on, without going there and doing a macro 32?
Doing a macro 8 and then
not being able to see the boards that contain more trucks than loads is just flat out retarded. If I want to know how many trucks are in Indianapolis, then I want to know, regardless of whether or not there are more trucks than loads sitting there at the moment. I may want to go there for reasons
other than getting the quickest load out. And I'd like to be able to make that decision an informed one. I want to know what I'd be getting myself into if I go there, other than merely there are more trucks than loads there. How many trucks? How many loads? "We have deemed that you do not need to know that information." Horse hockey.
In order to make an informed decision, we need more information than less information. The stress has been on
"you ***cannot*** make a better decision based on your years of experience" which is clearly stating that my years of experience is worthless and I'm not as smart as this new system. Yeah, well, my years of experience tells me that sitting in Tampa at #2 on the board is stoopid, yet that's where I am. So, which is more stoopider, me sitting here in Tampa, or someone telling me that I "
***cannot*** make a better decision based on [my] years of experience?"
And apparently, there are no other boards within a 300 mile radius of Tampa, or Ft Pierce. <snort> That, of course, is not true, there are, because the computer sent me from Ft Pierce to Tampa (and the Tampa board didn't show up then I did a macro 8 while in Ft Pierce), but they apparently have more trucks than loads sitting there. That's certainly true for Ocala (snicker). Still, it would be nice to know where they are. I might want to go to Orlando, for whatever reason, and I might consider going there if I knew there was already one truck there, but I don't want to go there if there are already 4 trucks there and I'd be #5 in the Hit Parade. Then again, I might. But, Macro 8 won't let me know one way or the other.
If there are 5 vans in Indianapolis but only 4 loads a day go out of there, macro 8 is mute on the subject. But, I might want to go there, anyway, knowing full well I won't get a load out today, but probably will tomorrow, and that's fine, cause I want to take today to rest up and sleep, and sitting 6th on the board today knowing I'll be 2nd tomorrow is great. Yet, macros 8 won't give me the information I need in order to make an informed decision.
If you're at the Flying J in Franklin, KY, what board would you be on? It would be nice to know before going there.
What board would you be on if you were in Lebanon, TN? The Nashville Zip Code certainly doesn't encompass Lebanon. What about Walton, KY? The Cincinnati Zip Code doesn't cross state lines. How about Henderson, KY? Hopkinsville? Jeffersonville, OH?
Why is the right side of the Zip Code PDF screwed up so that the cities only have 8 letters in them? (that's rhetorical, I know why). How can they put out something like that? It's pretty easy to drag a field width to make it wider. If the time can't be taken to put out something that is (a) readable and (b) semi-professional looking, what does that say about the precision of this new system? Was this new system conceived, created and implemented with the same lack details and precision, with the same half-azzed effort?
I think we're going to find that increased precision and accuracy of the system isn't going to make the system work any better if the driver still can't project the options that are available.
Precisely.
It'll certainly make life easier for the dispatchers, though, which is obviously what this is mainly about. It's to make things easier on dispatchers by saying to the drivers, "Go here because we say so." Sure, if the drivers accept the empty moves and go where they're told, then load efficiency will have no other choice to but to go up, and that's a good thing overall, but it might not be good on a case-by-case basis (like sitting in Tampa for a week because we do
roughly a load a day out of here, which is another way of saying more than one load, and less than six loads, in the last 5 days).
Knowing that the 50 miles out was the boundary, while far from ideal, at least we had an idea of where the board boundaries were. Now, there's no clue, since the boards are categorized by Zip Code, in many cases encompassing many different Zip Codes.
Where's the map that we need in order to know
precisely where these boundaries are? Where's the precision?
This new system has much potential, but so far, it looks like just a different way of trying to automate something without getting the problems fixed to begin with. For example, if I decide to move to Orlando, on my own, how to I inform the computer of that, and just exactly how close to Orlando do I need to be in order to be on that board? I dunno.
