As transportation professionals, we all understand the importance of efficient and effective appointment scheduling. Not only does it impact the profitability of your business, but it also directly affects the income and satisfaction of your drivers.
One common issue we see is the tendency to set appointments with too much transit time. This might be due to a desire to protect against potential service failures or maybe to a lack of knowledge about the transit time needed. However, this can actually have negative consequences.
For example, if a driver has to wait for an appointment for longer than necessary, it cuts into their driving time and therefore their pay. Alternatively, if a driver is dispatched to a drop yard to drop their load with too much transit time and pick up another so they can keep moving, it can incur additional costs and increase the risk of a service failure if the load is unable to be repowered.
Performance improvement begins with determining the amount of appointment time above the ideal transit time for historical orders by CSR, customer, lane, shipper, consignee, day of week, etc. This lag measure allows you to keep score and identify the most impactful opportunities for improvement.
Make sure your customer service team, planners and driver managers have the tools, training and process they need to effectively determine good transit times and appointments.
One lead measure you can create is to look at current appointed orders that have not yet been dispatched, but have too much appointed transit time compared to the ideal transit time. By reappointing these orders, you can help to ensure that your drivers are spending as much time as possible on the road, maximizing their income and your profitability.
While the benefits of addressing appointment scheduling may seem small at first glance, they can quickly add up. In fact, by addressing this issue, we have frequently seen an extra hour of driving time per day per driver, resulting in an additional $150 in revenue per day and conservatively around $5 per day in additional profit.
For a fleet of 250 trucks that are driving 5 days a week and 50 weeks per year, that adds up to over $300,000 in additional profit per year.
In summary, addressing appointment scheduling may seem like a small change, but it can have a significant impact on the efficiency and profitability of your business. By ensuring that your drivers are spending as much time as possible on the road and minimizing unnecessary wait times, you can improve their satisfaction and increase our bottom line.
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