Waiting for loading. The problem of lines in cargo transportation and warehouse logistics

Lines of trucks in warehouses, terminals and other logistics facilities cause losses both to the owners of these facilities and to the carriers themselves. Does this problem have a solution?

Warehouse on wheels

For a disgruntled trucker, a line is worse than downtime. Not only is the time spent in it paid poorly or not paid at all, you can’t relax either: if you fall asleep, you lose your place. In the United States, a truck has a waiting time of 2.5 hours, and in 9.3% of cases, the waiting time exceeds 6 hours. In Europe, truckers got used to long hours and created the social movement “The driver is not a dog,” which requires owners of warehouses and terminals to open access to restrooms and put things in order. In third world countries, everything is even worse: in the Nigerian port of Apapa lines grow by tens of kilometers, and the average waiting time for loading is calculated not in days, but in weeks.“This problem is also relevant for us,” says Sergei Vladimirov, chairman of the Russian Carriers Association (ODA). - When planning their schedule, drivers lay about 4 hours for loading or unloading, but often it takes a day.

It is not easy to evaluate the losses of carriers, but if you take the average price for renting a truck to work in the city, it’s about 1,500 rubles per hour.

In this case, the money is lost both by the owner of the truck and by the driver himself, who, even if he receives some kind of symbolic fee for standing in line, receives it only for the first 3-4 hours of waiting.- “No one will pay him anymore. Rates are already minimal, “explains Sergey Vladimirov.

The ODA Chairperson is confident that some enterprises deliberately keep cars in parking lots, using them as a “warehouse on wheels”. He notes that a single and effective solution to this problem does not exist: the judicial system that could protect the rights of carriers, according to Sergei Vladimirov, is completely ineffective.

Problem for everyone

For business owners, lines are just as undesirable as for drivers. “Often the auto line accumulates outside the terminal and irritates local residents,” says Alexey Yenshin, Marine Digital's CPO. - Otherwise, the terminal must contain parking in its territory, sacrificing a storage place that could bring more money.

Destruction of residents of nearby houses can be a problem for large warehouses and terminals located within the boundaries of settlements. If local authorities take the side of the citizens, the owners of the facility may have serious troubles.

Often, officials shoot from the hip: so the governor of Vladivostok, tired of a large number of heavy trucks on city streets restricted the movement of trucks in the daytime.

Both logisticians and drivers, who now have to work at night, suffer because of this.Queues from trucks can be formed spontaneously, and then the load on warehouse employees will also be unstable. If in the morning the logisticians are idle, and in the evening in an emergency mode they are trying to cope with the suddenly surging flow of heavy trucks, their efficiency will be low.

“Due to planning and a clear understanding of the transport arrival schedule, the throughput capacity of the terminals we worked with increased by 5%,” notes Alexey Yenshin.

Do not forget about the dissatisfaction of carriers. Their costs are rising, and the work and rest regimes of drivers are tightening: in connection with this, transport companies are increasingly demanding compensation for delays.

A simple solution

Organizing an electronic line may seem difficult and costly - but only at first glance. The problem has a simple solution: the Qline cloud service. This is an electronic line, the implementation of which does not require the involvement of programmers and takes just minutes. Working with Qline is very simple. You register in the system and create a “virtual dispatching office” (a page or a link to it can be placed on the enterprise’s website), where you indicate when and at what time you can receive cars. Freight forwarders and carriers choose the appropriate time intervals for them and reserve them; drivers receive an SMS indicating the time of arrival.

The subscription fee for using the service - 49 euros per month; this money will be repulsed many times if at least one carrier requires compensation for a forced idle truck. And the nerves saved by logisticians and drivers can hardly be estimated with money.

Qline is useful in every warehouse, and this is not an exaggeration. You take hundreds of heavy trucks or dozens of LCVs, the electronic line will help to avoid heavy truck traffic jams and congestion, and help logisticians to have theirs work more stable.