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Moving Words – Route Management

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.” -Edmund Hillary

Planning is everything, and everyone has a plan. Some plans set up failure; others maintain the status quo; but the right plan will bring success to your company. Some movers and agencies run on the day-to-day plan. In the morning, dispatchers determine which vans are going to be empty that day and start searching for tonnage for them: not a good plan, but a plan. As the person in charge of keeping the agency in the profit lane, you’ve got to have a master plan: one that looks as far into the future as possible. Stress to your dispatchers and sales staff that if they haven’t located the return load before assigning the outbound load to the Van Operator … they have failed to plan.

Route management keeps that loaded van on the most direct path between pick up of each shippers’ household goods and delivery of same; minimizing distance traveled, thus saving on operational costs and each Van Operator’s Hours of Service. The idea that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points works very well here. Once a household load is delivered, both the number of days from that delivery date and the number of miles required to complete the next trip all belong to this new load. Regardless of whether your Van Operator is deadheading to the next house or heading back to your warehouse, every time the van is rolling, there’s money going out the stacks.

If you don’t figure in all of your costs in this manner, the tariff you’ll come up with will be incorrect: showing a false profit on the books, or NO profit!

Route management planning also must carefully consider your regular accounts. Your Van Operators don’t always have to haul only household goods in order for their vans to be profitable, for them and for your company. Your careful planning must include one very important element to truly be successful: The Dedicated Run. This allows for more complete planning of your trucking assets, and adds in the desirable driver familiarization of the distance and time required to complete his regular load and knowledge of the route. With your Van Operators knowing their usual time, distance and route for a dedicated run, you have better control of costs, greater ability to determine revenue (both gross and net), and generally a safer environment in which to operate. These all work together, helping to create a healthier bottom line. Think of this as garnering a ‘Bread and Butter Run’ for each of your Van Operators. You must minimally have one outbound ‘Dedicated Bread and Butter Run’ per truck. Teach your sales staff and your dispatchers to search for those runs, and encourage your Van Operators to always keep their eyes open and ears ready for information about them too.

Keep in mind the following when setting up your Route Management strategy:

  1. Set up dedicated runs that maintain lane density and proper route management. You’ll have to work very closely with your sales staff and your dispatchers to create these profitable runs.
  2. Remind your sales staff and dispatchers to look for tonnage before it’s needed. .
  3. Always have more tonnage available than trucks.
  4. Set up a Dedicated Bread and Butter run for each truck. This can also counterbalance S.E.T. Disorder, or ‘Seasonal Empty Trailer’ Disorder.
  5. Every person in your agency needs to remember: Don’t look for loads at the last minute.
  6. Keep your sales staff hustling and your dispatchers figuring space available on each trip.
  7. Always plan two to three loads ahead for each van.
  8. Don’t send any van out without a return plan.
  9. Stay in touch with your Van Operators, and do your best to keep them energized, so they provide top quality service to each household. There are still major corporations in this country that believe in relocating their management on a regular basis. You want those shippers calling you back.
  10. Always look beyond the horizon.

Remember success comes with a plan. The further out you can plan your loads the more money both the agency and Van Operator will generate, along with lower costs for both. For every empty trailer being pulled down the Interstate, its cost has to be calculated into future shipments and loads. If the van is loaded with reasonable paying shipments and running down the highway, its cost is covered, hence reducing the cost on subsequent loads and reducing the needed revenue on each load to be profitable.

“It’s impossible to map out a route to your destination if you don’t know where you’re starting from.” -Suze Orman

Timothy Brady ©2018
To contact, Brady go to www.timothybrady.com

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