Schedule Your Warehouse Dock Door like a Pro with these Best Practices

Schedule Your Warehouse Dock Door like a Pro with these Best Practices | LoadProof

Another best practice that you can implement in your distributions center is something called appointment scheduling. So basically what this means is when the truck drivers are arriving to your DC or when when they’re about to come to your DC they call ahead through their transportation companies and say “hey please give me an appointment, and I’m going to be there at this time, this date”. Booking the appointment makes it easy to make sure when the truck arrives you have a dock door that’s open and people that are ready to receive this product, so the truck driver can come drop off the shipment and then leave. From a transportation perspective it is very efficient for them. When you work with them by having an appointment, and not make them wait then you will be able to get better deals with the transportation provider.

This is helpful especially if you’re paying for the freight transportation. I still remember, it’s so fresh in my mind and this was as part of MBA – we all went to China because one of the courses was that international residency. We went to China and Korea and we spent three days in Beijing and three days in Shanghai. As a part of the Shanghai tour we also visited the port. In the port we actually visited a Meyers DC and on the way to the DC we have seen this long line of trucks. At least a mile long, they’re all these trucks small-small trucks waiting to drop off the shipment in the Meyers DC. We walked into the Meyers DC and then we saw these nice Jew H boxes and Jew H containers that were all being loaded in the container that travels on the ship so it was very fascinating to see you. China is evolving and they don’t have all the sophisticated systems and processes like how the US does, I mean they are getting better and better.

Because of this lack of appointment scheduling process these guys were literally waiting for a mile. The trucks were parked one after another and the truck drivers were either sitting there or sleeping in the truck. It’s not just having the time wasted for all these guys because they could have obviously spend that time doing something else and making money. These guys were literally waiting barring the worst, with no proper appointment scheduling process. Had the appointment scheduling process been there they wouldn’t be waiting for that long.

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