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Analyze the necessity of numerous daily, weekly or bi-weekly delivery trips currently being made by your company drivers. Remember that many times when habits are formed (trips organized), they continue forever regardless of the necessity. People will repeat the habit for fear of the sky falling. They do not know why the company started but figure they should continue to do so without asking. This is wrong. This is why you must question regular trips being made that seem odd or for no reason.
Where are your trucks really going? Analyze freight trips made over a month or maybe one full quarter. Find out where they go, what they pick up, whether the products sold or services provided were profitable and more than are covered by the selling prices charged and collected.
Most employees sadly do what they are told and do not question the reasoning (or lack thereof). Many will not know why these regular trips are made but they do know they were being made when they started working for the company and they have not stopped them because they were not instructed to do so…yet. Start asking some questions.
Questions for freight delivery personnel about waste, cutting costs, customer feedback and general observations:
- Are there any trips you are making now as a driver that are wasteful and could possibly be eliminated?
- Are you making any repeated trip each week where cutting the number from four or five down to two or three trips would suffice? Give a specific example.
- Is there a better way to buy fuel at a cheaper rate? Must the products be sent on our truck? Can they be mailed normal carrier?
- Are you given everything you need before you leave to make deliveries?
- Are the instructions provided for your trips to get to the customers’ facilities adequate or do they result in you being late, directed to wrong addresses or otherwise incomplete or incorrect too often?
- What do you suggest should be changed or modified or added or subtracted from the drivers’ instructions provided to you prior to your departure that would expedite and help you on your trips?
- Are we wasting money on our trucks? What do we need to change or alter? (i.e. gas put in other non-authorized vehicles, gas card abuse, no control on spending on company credit cards, no oversight on driving records, excess accidents, people take vehicles home, people use company cars and trucks for personal use, vehicles not maintained as required, too much damage unreported, drive off accidents or damage)
- Do you see any cost savings that we are missing concerning freight costs?
- Are our trucks outdated? Lousy on gas mileage? Do they break down too often?
- Do we need to consider buying a new truck or truck(s)?
- Do you think we have too many drivers? What makes you say this?
- If you had to reduce trips down per week, where would you do it?
- Are there trips we are making where you think we lose money? (i.e. Long delayed waits, damaged shipments, false claims by customer employees).
- Of all of the facilities that you visit, which stops are the worst? Why are they the worst?
- Of all of the customers’ facilities where you make deliveries, which do you not trust? If there are none, which do you regret visiting and why?
- Which of the customers’ facilities take the most time to deliver?
- Do you ever see any questionable activities within our own organization when you are picking up or dropping loads?
- Do you ever see any concerning or questionable activities when you are picking up or dropping off at the customers’ facilities?
- Are there any problems with pulling in, loading and exiting our company facility and loading dock? Is it easy, difficult, taking time to maneuver or cause problems and delays because of the design or flaws with the way the dock is currently built?
- If you could change the company dock(s) in any way, what would it be?
- What is the worst problem for unloading and loading at the outside customers’ facilities? Is there any equipment you need that would speed up the process or make it easier and safer?
- Which customer has the worst facility for truck access and unloading in your opinion? Why do you say this specifically concerning the layout of the unloading facility?
- Which customer facility takes the longest time to unload, get paperwork signed and dated and then ultimately get approval and clearance to leave?
- Which facility is the best to unload? Why?
