"What happened to the 30 mile radius? I'm soooooooooooooo confused!!!"
The Virtual Terminal is a 30 mile radius. Apparently, you have to go within that 30 mile radius to "check in" to be on that board.
Each Virtual Terminal is the center of a 120 mile radius of our most regular shippers, so that when you are within that magical circle you are never more than 120 miles from a shipper. Sounds great, as most vehicles will be within 60 miles of most shippers.
But if you are 50 miles from, say, Rolumus, the QC (and online) will tell you that you are on the Rolumus board, even though technically, technically, it's merely telling you the closest board, and you really need to be within 30 miles of that board to tecnically be on it.
The problem is the QC is on one page, and the Virtual Terminals program is on another, as yet unfishined page. According to all the information we've received thus far, if you are more than 30 miles from the center of a Virtual Terminal, then you are not on a board at all, and you will not be on one unless and until you go "check in". So, it would seem, that when this is all fully functional, if you are 50 miles from Romulus, your QC and online will not recognize you as being on a board or having a board position.
That's why I give this whole thing, as least what we've seen of it to date, and the information that we've been given, a solid F.
This entire thing is designed from the perspective of theory and not from applied theory. This reminds me of Communism, in that it looks great on paper, but it don't work with people. The Virtual Terminals sounds like a great idea, gets everyone huddled up and ready to get loaded, but when you apply it for-real, it doesn't work. They're asking us to trade critical HOS hours and deadhead time and expenses for the sake of simplicity.
This is set up so that you could concievably have nearly every truck and van incurring as much as 200 miles of unpaid deadhead on a daily basis between delivery of one load and picking up the next load, between deadheading to the "check-in" point and then the unpaid 100 minimum to get another load. It won't be that much, of course, but looking at things from a practical, conservative standpoint, I can see that there could very well be a 25%-30% increase in unpaid deadhead miles across the board.
Sure, paid Empty Moves will help, but according to the information we've received, it won't help much, if at all, and in most cases will be counter-productive. There is no reason to deliver a load in St Louis, and then have to deadhead 2 hours to Columbia to "check in", just to have to deadhead right back to St Louis to get loaded out again. Oh, and while this is all going on, you've just destroyed your hours. Excellent.
Bottom line is, this will (a) require too much wear and tear on the vehicle for not enough return, and (b) start your clock with no productivity. And in the end, we're less efficient as a fleet, because contrary to the theory on paper, we are definitely not properly positioned as a fleet.
"But before they messed with the boards you could already tell how many trucks were within a 50mi of Jackson, Flint, Saginaw Toledo, ETC. So you knew how many trucks you were competing with and about where they were."
My point exactly.
This is still in the pre-implementation stage, so I'm willing to take a wait and see approach, but I do know that regardless of how it is implemented, if we can't see where every other vehicle in our class is located on a given board, it will be absolutely impossible for the fleet to effeciently and effectively reposition itself based on 120 mile radius boards. Can't be done.
