Virtual Truck Stops

[mjolnir131]

The Sacrimento terminal need to be atleast 65-70 miles out. With Cali's Crap er i mean CARP rules the nearest truck stop with idleair is the Loves at rippon so trucks without APU can be on the board and still be complient. i think it's 62 miles or something like that 65 would cover it

 

[Bruno]

In the same breath for council members, they need to get rid of this check in/checkout and 30 mile radius business.

I think it should be in place Dave, but we need more Service Centers to service the customers needs. The 90 minute pick up is what made this busniess what it is today. Roberts Express was great for their customer service needs.

I have yet to hear why there would be any benefit to this.

The Benefit would be able to service the customers needs faster, this is expedite frieight. The name of the game is to get the freight picked up and on its way. Lets see, 3 hour wait to get the freight picked up from Panther. 90 minutes if they call FedEx Custom Critical. Now which one would you call?

 

[Turtle]

If you deliver in Louisville, why deadhead to Lexington to check in and be 90 minutes from the pickup, when you can just stay in Louisville and be 15 minutes away from the pickup? No, this silly "check in" thing is just that, silly, not to mention counter productive. Yeah, it puts everyone within 90 minutes of a pickup, even if you were sitting around the corner from the shipper in the first place.

The idea is a good one, but, so far, it's being implemented very badly. Seeing 12 loads a day on the Lexington board doesn't tell you that 10 of them are within 30 miles of Louisville, not to mention when you see 12 trucks on that board you have no idea if all 12 are sitting Lexington or how many are in Louisville.

120 mile diameter boards are more than 11,000 square miles. If you're sitting dead center then you're within 90 minutes of the shipper, sounds good, looks good on paper, but it don't work in the real world unless the carrier is prepared to pay you fully loaded miles for all miles driven, both to and from the Virtual Terminal.

The old boards were far from perfect, but they really narrowed it down, to well within 90 minutes, of where most of the freight came from, and maybe more importantly where the freight did not come from, and where the other trucks in your general area were generally located. Now, no one knows, other than what goes on inside those 11,000 square miles.

Birmingham, 3 loads a day. I'm First Out on a 3-a-day board for 3 days. Turns out, those loads were coming out of Huntsville and Athens, not Birmingham. If we'd had a Birmingham board and a Huntsville board, I wouldn't have wasted 3 days in Birmingham because that's where they said the freight was coming out of.

But, hey, {big thumbs up} the upside was that I was 90 minutes away from the freight. For 3 days. While those closer to Huntsville got loaded. For 3 days. I eventually got loaded out of Birmingham on Friday. It didn't deliver for 3 days.

You might call all this better servicing the customer, but I call it an astoundingly poor use of logistics resources.

 

[davekc]

If you deliver in Louisville, why deadhead to Lexington to check in and be 90 minutes from the pickup, when you can just stay in Louisville and be 15 minutes away from the pickup? No, this silly "check in" thing is just that, silly, not to mention counter productive. Yeah, it puts everyone within 90 minutes of a pickup, even if you were sitting around the corner from the shipper in the first place.

The idea is a good one, but, so far, it's being implemented very badly. Seeing 12 loads a day on the Lexington board doesn't tell you that 10 of them are within 30 miles of Louisville, not to mention when you see 12 trucks on that board you have no idea if all 12 are sitting Lexington or how many are in Louisville.

120 mile diameter boards are more than 11,000 square miles. If you're sitting dead center then you're within 90 minutes of the shipper, sounds good, looks good on paper, but it don't work in the real world unless the carrier is prepared to pay you fully loaded miles for all miles driven, both to and from the Virtual Terminal.

The old boards were far from perfect, but they really narrowed it down, to well within 90 minutes, of where most of the freight came from, and maybe more importantly where the freight did not come from, and where the other trucks in your general area were generally located. Now, no one knows, other than what goes on inside those 11,000 square miles.

Birmingham, 3 loads a day. I'm First Out on a 3-a-day board for 3 days. Turns out, those loads were coming out of Huntsville and Athens, not Birmingham. If we'd had a Birmingham board and a Huntsville board, I wouldn't have wasted 3 days in Birmingham because that's where they said the freight was coming out of.

But, hey, {big thumbs up} the upside was that I was 90 minutes away from the freight. For 3 days. While those closer to Huntsville got loaded. For 3 days. I eventually got loaded out of Birmingham on Friday. It didn't deliver for 3 days.

You might call all this better servicing the customer, but I call it an astoundingly poor use of logistics resources.

Bingo!!! It is where the freight is that makes a difference. Again, forget about 30 radius, and check in/ check out business.
Excessive deadhead and the other madness serves no purpose.
With fuel climbing, who wants to deadhead around for no apparent reason? I think Turtle as I have in the past, describe the reasons perfectly.

 

[xiggi]

The check in in no way serves the customer better. Letting us know where the loads are coming from does. Telling us to be in one place and then dispatching trucks that did not do that but are closer to the load might be good for the customer but in no way is fair to drivers. I have benefited from being closer to loads myself but it is not a fair system.

 

[panther_art]

Do we have to be within the 30 miles or can we still sit anywhere on these boards to get loaded. Everytime I ask dispatch about the 30 miles they say they know nothing about having to be within 30 miles of these terminels.

 

[pelicn]

Still no maps for the drivers web, so how could we possibly know where these "virtual terminals" are!