The Importance Of Being On Time

Are you familiar with Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest?  It was often referred to as "A Trivial Comedy For Serious People."  I've considered it a very funny story for a long time now. I have for you a sort of funny story today, concerning the importance of being on time.

Of course I think it is fairly obvious when you are in Trucking that you would want to be on time with your deliveries, but something that happened to me last week gives a great illustration into how it not only serves your customer's needs, but also helps to keep you moving along so that you are consistently making the most of your time out here.  A Truck Driver gets paid for how much he gets done - he gets paid by the mile, not by the hour.  So it isn't really important how much time you are on the job, but how efficient you are at moving your product along.  Less efficiency in our case means less money at the end of the month.  Sitting and waiting has a negative effect on your bottom line.  You want to always make a practice of keeping yourself moving.

It is up to you to learn the basics of how this works, and to put the practices into play that will enable you to keep things moving along.  It is an all too common fallacy where the driver blames the company, or more specifically the dispatcher, for sitting around and waiting all the time.  Sure, there are some bad dispatchers, but for the most part, if a driver understands the principles of success out here, his dispatcher will be able to keep him moving well, and making good money.  Every trucking company wants their drivers busy and making money.  That is the way the company makes money.  If you are sitting around not getting much done, it is having a negative effect on the company's bottom line.

Trucking is an asset based business.  That simply means that they use their assets (their trucks) to produce revenue.  The more assets they have, the more potential they have to produce revenue.  If those assets are sitting idle, they are not being utilized to their best potential.  One of the principles that a professional driver wants to always practice is being consistently on time.  It is the driver's responsibility to keep that asset being productive.

Okay, last week on a back haul load from Connecticut I was bound for Unicoi, Tennessee, a nice little town in the Smoky Mountains.  If you follow along in here much, you may remember that I go to one of our customers there fairly often.  They don't have a lot of room in their yard, and therefore do not allow any overnight parking.  (at one time they did allow it, but have since stopped it)  They set delivery appointments with you, and the way this works is that once you pick up a load for them, you are responsible to call them and set an appointment.  They have a lot of deliveries coming both in and out of that place, and they pretty much set one appointment per hour for trucks that are coming to their facility.  They ask that you not come early so that you are not sitting in their yard taking up space, and they certainly don't want you to come late, for the obvious reasons.  You are expected to get there on time, or maybe only ten minutes ahead of schedule.

I picked up a pre-loaded trailer of what they call "Aluminum Rods" at the SAPA Plant in Cressona, Pennsylvania. These are similar to what we call "Aluminum Logs," but they aren't as long.  Here's a look at what the load looked like...

Recently over at Trucking Truth we had someone ask an intriguing question about becoming a flat-bed driver.  It seemed they thought that if they drove a flat-bed truck that they would not be required to do any difficult backing maneuvers.  They thought that might make it easier on them as a rookie driver.  That is a long time myth that has been kept alive by the dry van drivers who are always having to back their trucks up into difficult loading docks.  They see that flat-beds don't unload at docks, and therefore they wrongly assume we never get into any difficult backing situations.  The problem is that they never see us inside these great manufacturing facilities like the SAPA plant in Cressona where we have got to back our loaded trailer into these tarping stations designed to keep us from falling off of our trailers while getting our loads tarped.  Here is a look at the kinds of places we have to back into fairly often...

You can see my loaded trailer there in the center of the photo, and along side of it are the safety rails that I can walk on as I'm tarping my load.  Up at the top center of the photo is the rear of my grey Volvo tractor.  It may not be real obvious to you, but there is literally about two inches clearance on each side of my trailer to get in and out of this situation.  It is definitely a challenge when backing a 53 foot long trailer into one of these things, but once you've been at it for a while it just becomes a regular part of your day.

So, I spoke with the folks at IMC in Unicoi and we agreed on an appointment at 0900 (nine a.m.) on a Friday morning.  They warned me "if you are going to be late, you need to call us and give us a heads up."  Everything went well for me and after making the 525 mile trip, I arrived at their driveway exactly at 0900.  Their driveway goes down hill and makes a turn down into basically a big hole where their factory sits, and the yard is full of piled up aluminum product waiting to be dealt with in some form or another.  As I was descending the drive, another flat-bed driver from TMC is pulling in behind me.  I can see the door that we back into is open and there is no truck inside, so I am quickly assuming the driver behind me is either early or late, and I make a wide swing around in the yard so that I'm blocking the fellow behind me from muscling his way into position ahead of me at the door. This was a crucial move on my part, and part of why I wanted to share this bizarre story with you.

By doing what I did, I had effectively blocked the other driver from the door, and it also allowed me to start backing up to the door.  He had to wait in the driveway until I was backed up to the door, then he could proceed on down into the yard.  I got out of my truck, and immediately started getting my bungees off of my tarps so that I could get un-tarped and ready to back in and get unloaded.  Remember, I am here exactly at my appointment time.

The other driver parks and jumps out of his truck with paper work in hand, and goes right into the building to get checked in ahead of me.  This apparently was his first time here, and he wrongly assumed that they would let him in first if he checked in first.  I am right outside the door folding my tarps, and I can hear the frustrated receiving clerk arguing with the driver who is trying to make his case that he should be allowed to get unloaded before me.  His appointment was at 0800 - he is one hour late!  I can hear the clerk telling him, "We told you to call us if you are running late.  This conversation is the first thing we have heard from you today.  I am sorry, but this guy here has beat you to the door, and I am not going to put him off - he is on time."

I'll spare you the details of the cussing and swearing from the "late" driver that was coming from inside the doorway of the building, but needless to say he was not helping his case at all.  I was busily working away just outside, knowing all along that he was going to have to walk right past me as he exited the building to "sit and wait" in his truck.

I'll tell you that I am a very easy going person, who has learned a great deal through the years about human nature.  I have observed it in people, and more pointedly in myself, so that I consider myself to be very well versed in our faults as humans.  I try and not let people bother me too much, because I am usually already prepared for how they may react in certain situations.  This driver caught me just a little off guard though when he walked out the door.  As he was passing by me, down on my knees, busily rolling up my first section of tarp, he asked me this pointed question, "Do those people over at SAPA pay you extra for acting like such an (expletive inserted here) out here?"  Well at first the hair kind of started standing up on my neck, but I quickly put that feeling down, and slowly looked up at him with a disarming grin, and said, "Yes sir they do, and TMC will do the same thing for you when you start making your appointments on time."  You see, he was trying to dump his frustrations over his own shortcomings onto me and make me feel guilty - that is human nature.  People do this type of thing all the time to relieve their own conscience of guilt.  I just put it right back on him where it belonged in the first place - he was the one who was late after all!

I kept myself moving that day by being on time - it is important to be on time.  Now, here's the kicker to the story... As I was leaving at just about ten o'clock, the next truck driver who had an appointment at ten was pulling into the drive.  Guess who got unloaded next?  If you guessed the driver who had the ten o'clock appointment, then you get a gold star!  The driver who had the first appointment of the day was still sitting in his truck getting madder and madder as I left and went on my way to earning more money that day.