Repeated routes reduce driver dwell time at shippers, MIT researcher says

Regularly sending the same driver to the same shipper reduces the dreaded dwell time for freight loading and unloading, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher says.

“The amount of dwell that we expect a driver to experience at a facility drops almost exponentially with repeated visits to that facility,” David Correll, a lecturer and research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, said Wednesday during a keynote at FreightWaves’ Domestic Supply Chain Summit. 

“The brass tacks implication of that is that keeping people in the supply chain with consistent routes or consistent route expectations leads to things running more smoothly and effectively.”

Truckers talk when transparency is lacking

The lack of familiarity from facility to facility leads drivers to share their experiences with others formally and informally.

“Drivers are leaving reviews on Google maps for the facilities they visit. They’re not getting all the information they need before they arrive at a facility for the first time. So they are finding ways to share that information,” Correll said.

Both good and bad information.

“Anytime there is a vacuum of information, smart entrepreneurial people try to fill it. Those kinds of feedback mechanisms are showing up on some of the third-party apps like the Uber Freight app,” he said. “That’s something that is going to become more and more present going forward.”

There’s a greater good at stake.

“Experienced truck drivers like the million safe miles kind of folks are really impressive people, and keeping those people in our supply chains is tremendously valuable to the efficiency of the supply chains, to the overall quality of work that we do,” said Correll, who also leads The Driver Initiative within the FreightLab.

Plenty of sharing when times are good

The MIT Freightlab, which Correll co-directs, tries to understand and improve the working conditions of the American truck driver.

“When everyone’s having trouble finding a truck, then everyone has time to talk with me about how they can contribute to those efforts. In a softer market, people prioritize other things,” he said. “The leading shippers are looking past the next cycle and saying, ‘We’ve got to fix this in the long term and not just the short term.’”

‘The more you share with others …’

A classic Winnie the Pooh story moral “the more you share with others, the more they’ll share with you” applies to the freight ecosystem.

But part of the issue with sharing information, beyond the obvious like data security, is that some warehouses lack a unique identifier. Consistency of record keeping is a related problem.

“I can’t pinpoint all the hurdles, but companies are reluctant to share information if they don’t know what the payoff is for doing it or what the protections are for containing it,” Correll said. “You just need a standardized code if you’re going to do it.”

For example, a Walmart distribution center or warehouse needs to go by the same name internally and externally. The Industrial Standards Organization is studying the issue. But it’s hard to find the person locally with the power to do it, Correll said.

“In my perfect laboratory world, I would have all of the data from the shipper and all of the data from the carrier and all of the data from the TMS,” he said.

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Baton’s Andrus partnership: A lesson in effectively addressing dwell time

Click for more FreightWaves articles by Alan Adler.

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