How does your center operate?
- Thread starter HeyNowBrownCow
- Start date
bleedinbrown58
That’s Craptacular
Ahhh...i use the driver's seat.
HBGPreloader
Well-Known Member
Ya, there is a 9000 shelf. It's where all the end of the shift add/cuts go.
It might also explain all my walked in wrong cars too
Kicked Your Dog
25 Year UPSer/SoCal Feeder
Honest advice: There are no universal standards anymore. Just follow the golden rule: work as honestly and hard as possible. This doesn't mean be a company slave or minion. Respect your boss's position, not his personality, and your early years will fly by and hopefully life has greater things in store, UPS, or not. If you look at your job as a workout and challenge, you'll be able to make peace with the often frustrating demands imposed. Honest workers, that work SAFELY, and jive well with their crew are always secure in their jobs.
Island
Well-Known Member
I think the OP was trying to get some useful information for perspective. I see a few people found such a thing to be distasteful.
This is going to be a long one, if you don't find the dry facts interesting, don't read on.
For a while I was a trainer. My center does not run very well at all, and we don't follow any of the standard rules.
The way it should work is as follows, for preloads using conveyor belts. With boxlines it is a little different.
The box comes down the chute onto the belt. The first person it meets is the Splitter. This person is assigned the job of Splitting the belt and not much else. He may also handle incompatibles ("irregs") and dump Forever Bags, depending on how his center is laid out. In a center that can't run a lot of irreg drivers, due to a small irreg department running more volume than it should, a splitter often ends up handling the irregs himself. In a center with a properly-sized irreg department that runs enough drivers, the drivers will offload their irregs onto the belt, and the splitter may help lift the heavier or more cumbersome objects when needed.
In a large center with longer belts there may be two assigned Splitters. Splitter is a title in the company's internal documentation.
The second person the box will pass by should be the person in training to load. The lightest trucks should be the first ones at the front, where a person in training will typically handle one easy truck (which is also a training route for drivers, or a low volume route for drivers who have bid for fewer hours), which may be mostly air or bulk stops - not complicated. The loader in training should be out helping Split, handle irregs and smalls as well, because learning to Split will help them learn about their operation, which will help them do a better job building a work strategy as they handle incoming volume.
The trucks in the middle of the belt should all be relatively standard, with about equal volume and vehicle size. If there are bulk vans or "city trailers" involved, they will be in the very center most likely, though some centers put them at the end of a belt if there is a lot of extra space with rollers or some sort of overflow chute. In general, there should not be routes that get twice as many stops as other routes on the same belt. Trucks should be assigned belts based on drive distance, so one belt may have trucks that all go to a city 10 minutes away, while another belt will have all trucks for a city 30 minutes away. So the second belt in that example will have fewer stops in its trucks because there is more drivetime involved, but most of the trucks on that belt should have a very good average among them.
I have never seen in any company documentation an official policy about assigning bulk routes a specific position on a belt but it is my opinion that they should be toward the front of the belt. I believe that makes the other loaders' jobs much easier when, halfway down the belt, more than half of the volume has already been removed from the belt, making it much easier to find your packages that are coming to you.
Preloaders are trained to guess how their day's flow is going to go based on their load sheet documentation which their supervisor should provide at the beginning of the shift. Preferably it will be in the package car before the preloader arrives to work, along with totes for bulk smalls, perhaps a forever bag for bulk smalls, and the driver's dolly - these should all be in the truck well before work begins to ensure the preloader and the driver are properly equipped for the day.
A preloader should generally only have two trucks. This is actually in some official documentation. I am guessing that the company is pushing for all package cars to be larger vehicles, or else this wouldn't make any sense. If I am loading two smaller package cars I am probably going to be bored. Generally all preloaders should be loading about the same packages-per-hour, and your total for the day can be summed up by reading your load sheets in your assigned cars. So if your neighbor has half as many expected packages, he should be helping you if you find yourself in a big rush, unless he is new, or has some other extra duty.
The last loader on the belt will generally fewer cars to load because he also runs recycles back and forth with a push cart, as well as assembling missorts or clerk packages in groups for whoever is going to be picking them up. A clerk may pick up their own volume in a preload or, if their station is far away, someone else will be assigned to pull a cart of volume to the clerk once in a while. Some clerks may also handle missorts and recycles, depending on their workload.
Clerks in general should not be handling a lot of volume at a preload belt. Any blank PALs or clerk stickers should have been diverted somewhere in the operation before they reached a preload belt. And in my experience a lot of packages with no PALs at the end of a belt is a strong sign of lazy loaders pulling PALs off and walking away from the belt so they don't have to work quite as hard.
In the official methods, a supervisor will regularly walk up and down either side of his belt to look into each truck. Perhaps to look through the loads a little bit as he goes. But he is primarily supposed to be figuring out if there are any load problems. Like if 10 expected packages for route MALL are not individual t-shirts in little boxes but actually 40 lb crates of t-shirts, that truck is probably going to have a blown shelf. It is the preload supervisor's duty to find these kinds of problems, give the preloader a temporarily solution (usually stacking the problem outside his truck or under the belt) until he can communicate with route dispatch or some other member of management who can reassign volume. The preload supervisor will also spend 5 or ten minutes at a time showing something to a training preloader perhaps twice a shift, usually some complicated idea and not merely "this is how you face a package." A Preloader is not a Preloader until they can properly stategize their workflow and loaded volume, and that takes some trial and error if you do not have a good supervisor to train you.
New preloaders should have one truck. They are learning more about the operation than just loading. As they progress (probably after one week), they'll get trucks in the middle of the belt because at some point they don't need to learn about the belt, they need to learn to load well. The preloaders who work the trucks next to where newer employees are usually assigned should be the helpful type, able to sometimes push a box a few feet back up the belt or to help stack out when the new guy has a little trouble. There should be no other stackout on a proper preload belt, just the unexpected shelf blowouts to be rerouted, the new guy's little neat pile of catch-up, and irregs or large objects that would get in the way. There shouldn't be so many irregs stacked out because a supervisor should communicate to his Splitter or irreg team that a certain truck doesn't have room to load them until the end of the day. I think the drivers here would agree that they don't appreciate when a 2000 irreg is buried under a pile of 5000 and 7000 on the floor, it's better to place it closer to the 2000 shelf but if it gets in the way then it shouldn't be loaded until the end of the shift, when you can put it kind of in the way of someone walking through the truck, so long as the driver can get to it in sequence.
A final note on Splitters. An official Splitter will know to alternate his flow. He will have a steady stream of boxes but occasionally if he is opening bags, he won't dump fifty thousand letters on the belt all at once. He will stagger it out, perhaps 10 letters here, 10 letters there. The flow on the belt should look very solid and even, with no huge clumps or dense clusters of smaller boxes. Further strategy for Splitters gets kind of detailed, in terms of belt space management, but that's really up to the Splitter to learn on his own with some occasional 5 or 10 minute training demonstrations by a supervisor who knows how to do what he is showing the splitter. Much like load strategy for a package car.
And any supervisory demonstration is limited to 15 minutes at most, and is defined as the supervisor performing a work task while explaining what he is doing, as the employee being trained stands and watches. If the supervisor wants you to work beside him as he demonstrates something, it is generally accepted that this is acceptable only if he is assisting you and not just doing your job. If a supervisor walks into your truck and shows you how to face a few oddly shaped boxes while you are also loading boxes you brought in, you should generally stop what you are doing to watch, unless he is moving the volume that you are actively handling. In such cases of gray-area demonstration, I believe the time involved should be minimal, only a moment or two. The contract specifies training as demonstration. Working beside you, doing the same job as you except while also wearing a radio and a polo shirt, is not training.
I hope some of this helps. I took training seriously enough that it got me into hot water rather frequently and messily, until I decided my center was beyond help and it is the best I can do to offer tips to new people occasionally and mind my own business otherwise. People in better centers will eternally have my envy.
This is going to be a long one, if you don't find the dry facts interesting, don't read on.
For a while I was a trainer. My center does not run very well at all, and we don't follow any of the standard rules.
The way it should work is as follows, for preloads using conveyor belts. With boxlines it is a little different.
The box comes down the chute onto the belt. The first person it meets is the Splitter. This person is assigned the job of Splitting the belt and not much else. He may also handle incompatibles ("irregs") and dump Forever Bags, depending on how his center is laid out. In a center that can't run a lot of irreg drivers, due to a small irreg department running more volume than it should, a splitter often ends up handling the irregs himself. In a center with a properly-sized irreg department that runs enough drivers, the drivers will offload their irregs onto the belt, and the splitter may help lift the heavier or more cumbersome objects when needed.
In a large center with longer belts there may be two assigned Splitters. Splitter is a title in the company's internal documentation.
The second person the box will pass by should be the person in training to load. The lightest trucks should be the first ones at the front, where a person in training will typically handle one easy truck (which is also a training route for drivers, or a low volume route for drivers who have bid for fewer hours), which may be mostly air or bulk stops - not complicated. The loader in training should be out helping Split, handle irregs and smalls as well, because learning to Split will help them learn about their operation, which will help them do a better job building a work strategy as they handle incoming volume.
The trucks in the middle of the belt should all be relatively standard, with about equal volume and vehicle size. If there are bulk vans or "city trailers" involved, they will be in the very center most likely, though some centers put them at the end of a belt if there is a lot of extra space with rollers or some sort of overflow chute. In general, there should not be routes that get twice as many stops as other routes on the same belt. Trucks should be assigned belts based on drive distance, so one belt may have trucks that all go to a city 10 minutes away, while another belt will have all trucks for a city 30 minutes away. So the second belt in that example will have fewer stops in its trucks because there is more drivetime involved, but most of the trucks on that belt should have a very good average among them.
I have never seen in any company documentation an official policy about assigning bulk routes a specific position on a belt but it is my opinion that they should be toward the front of the belt. I believe that makes the other loaders' jobs much easier when, halfway down the belt, more than half of the volume has already been removed from the belt, making it much easier to find your packages that are coming to you.
Preloaders are trained to guess how their day's flow is going to go based on their load sheet documentation which their supervisor should provide at the beginning of the shift. Preferably it will be in the package car before the preloader arrives to work, along with totes for bulk smalls, perhaps a forever bag for bulk smalls, and the driver's dolly - these should all be in the truck well before work begins to ensure the preloader and the driver are properly equipped for the day.
A preloader should generally only have two trucks. This is actually in some official documentation. I am guessing that the company is pushing for all package cars to be larger vehicles, or else this wouldn't make any sense. If I am loading two smaller package cars I am probably going to be bored. Generally all preloaders should be loading about the same packages-per-hour, and your total for the day can be summed up by reading your load sheets in your assigned cars. So if your neighbor has half as many expected packages, he should be helping you if you find yourself in a big rush, unless he is new, or has some other extra duty.
The last loader on the belt will generally fewer cars to load because he also runs recycles back and forth with a push cart, as well as assembling missorts or clerk packages in groups for whoever is going to be picking them up. A clerk may pick up their own volume in a preload or, if their station is far away, someone else will be assigned to pull a cart of volume to the clerk once in a while. Some clerks may also handle missorts and recycles, depending on their workload.
Clerks in general should not be handling a lot of volume at a preload belt. Any blank PALs or clerk stickers should have been diverted somewhere in the operation before they reached a preload belt. And in my experience a lot of packages with no PALs at the end of a belt is a strong sign of lazy loaders pulling PALs off and walking away from the belt so they don't have to work quite as hard.
In the official methods, a supervisor will regularly walk up and down either side of his belt to look into each truck. Perhaps to look through the loads a little bit as he goes. But he is primarily supposed to be figuring out if there are any load problems. Like if 10 expected packages for route MALL are not individual t-shirts in little boxes but actually 40 lb crates of t-shirts, that truck is probably going to have a blown shelf. It is the preload supervisor's duty to find these kinds of problems, give the preloader a temporarily solution (usually stacking the problem outside his truck or under the belt) until he can communicate with route dispatch or some other member of management who can reassign volume. The preload supervisor will also spend 5 or ten minutes at a time showing something to a training preloader perhaps twice a shift, usually some complicated idea and not merely "this is how you face a package." A Preloader is not a Preloader until they can properly stategize their workflow and loaded volume, and that takes some trial and error if you do not have a good supervisor to train you.
New preloaders should have one truck. They are learning more about the operation than just loading. As they progress (probably after one week), they'll get trucks in the middle of the belt because at some point they don't need to learn about the belt, they need to learn to load well. The preloaders who work the trucks next to where newer employees are usually assigned should be the helpful type, able to sometimes push a box a few feet back up the belt or to help stack out when the new guy has a little trouble. There should be no other stackout on a proper preload belt, just the unexpected shelf blowouts to be rerouted, the new guy's little neat pile of catch-up, and irregs or large objects that would get in the way. There shouldn't be so many irregs stacked out because a supervisor should communicate to his Splitter or irreg team that a certain truck doesn't have room to load them until the end of the day. I think the drivers here would agree that they don't appreciate when a 2000 irreg is buried under a pile of 5000 and 7000 on the floor, it's better to place it closer to the 2000 shelf but if it gets in the way then it shouldn't be loaded until the end of the shift, when you can put it kind of in the way of someone walking through the truck, so long as the driver can get to it in sequence.
A final note on Splitters. An official Splitter will know to alternate his flow. He will have a steady stream of boxes but occasionally if he is opening bags, he won't dump fifty thousand letters on the belt all at once. He will stagger it out, perhaps 10 letters here, 10 letters there. The flow on the belt should look very solid and even, with no huge clumps or dense clusters of smaller boxes. Further strategy for Splitters gets kind of detailed, in terms of belt space management, but that's really up to the Splitter to learn on his own with some occasional 5 or 10 minute training demonstrations by a supervisor who knows how to do what he is showing the splitter. Much like load strategy for a package car.
And any supervisory demonstration is limited to 15 minutes at most, and is defined as the supervisor performing a work task while explaining what he is doing, as the employee being trained stands and watches. If the supervisor wants you to work beside him as he demonstrates something, it is generally accepted that this is acceptable only if he is assisting you and not just doing your job. If a supervisor walks into your truck and shows you how to face a few oddly shaped boxes while you are also loading boxes you brought in, you should generally stop what you are doing to watch, unless he is moving the volume that you are actively handling. In such cases of gray-area demonstration, I believe the time involved should be minimal, only a moment or two. The contract specifies training as demonstration. Working beside you, doing the same job as you except while also wearing a radio and a polo shirt, is not training.
I hope some of this helps. I took training seriously enough that it got me into hot water rather frequently and messily, until I decided my center was beyond help and it is the best I can do to offer tips to new people occasionally and mind my own business otherwise. People in better centers will eternally have my envy.
thessalonian13
Well-Known Member
Our center runs like crap. Enough said.
Fedex Guy
Well-Known Member
Sounds about right. On my first day loading they have me five trucks. It was pretty awesome.
What?...way too long brother
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