I\u2019m Marty and your back with Warehouse and Operations as a Career! A few listeners did not have a problem pointing out that last week we did not make it to a few of the Shipping and Transportation positions so I thought we\u2019d start off there today! So we wrapped up last week with the Loader position. That\u2019s the last physical position on the warehouse side so lets take a look at where those cases go from there! It may be prudent to talk a little bit on how and why they ended up on that particular load too.
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\nSo when the customer orders for the shift are loaded into our WMS, as we all know that stands for warehouse management system, a component of that is reconfiguring the selected freight back into pallets or loads. One of our transportation departments tasks is Routing. The routers work with computer programs that efficiently define how a load will be delivered, it\u2019ll take things like delivery windows or when the customer wants to take delivery of and/or receive their orders. It\u2019s also making allowances for cube and weight. I mean a trailer will only hold x number of cases and can only carry so much weight. Miles are important too; it\u2019ll try and only route what can physically be delivered within the shift of the driver. Remember that Delivery Drivers have to abide by department of transportation rules or DOT rules. They can only drive x number of hours and are required to have so much time off after exceeding those hours. So our routers build or designate a route based on a lot of variables each day. All these tasks typically falls under the shipping departments. When I was routing, back in the late 70\u2019s/early 80\u2019s, I used an old Mapsco, or a big book of maps that listed the block numbers and all the cross streets. We didn\u2019t have these great computer systems, drivers didn\u2019t have GPS in the palm of their hands. Every driver had a mapsco in their trucks, shoot, we all had maps in our glove compartments.
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\nAnyway, todays routing programs are very complex systems and can take just about any information you can think of to feed into it and produce a very time and fuel-efficient route for you to follow as a delivery driver. The WMS will produce those loads, or the product comprising those loads and make a load map for the loaders to know which pallets to place on each trailer and not only in what order but their positioning as well, or which way they need to be turned. This process is important because we want the driver to easily be able to find each stop for the delivery stop. If the selectors have placed each case in its proper position and on the correct pallet, and then the loader properly placed the pallets according to his load map, then the driver can locate the cases for each stop easily and make his or her delivery quickly, allowing the customer to get back to their business. Routing is one of those critical jobs, it carries a lot of responsibility and is important. Drivers, Salesmen & Customers depend on the job they do! I enjoyed my time as a router but that pressure, every shift.....I know guys that\u2019s been doing it for 12 or 13 years, it works for them. Thankfully I only had to do it for 3 years, I lived off coffee to keep me focused.
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\nShipping, shipping can be a large department in certain industries. It can include packing products to be picked up by a parcel service or making arraignments for LTL, meaning less than truck load, freight. That\u2019ll include banding product, wrapping it securely etc. and filling out the Bill of Laden's for the carrier. We\u2019ll probably be responsible for loading the trailer ourselves for the common carriers or an owner operator. We may be using all kinds of supplies too, bubble wrap, maybe we\u2019ll have to fold out and tape up several different sized boxes, oh and those little clingy peanut packing things. I was once responsible for filling up our gravity fed bags with those things. They came in a large,