The military and government are partly to blame for slow truck deliveries, Tom Boyle, president of Boyle Transportation, Billerica, Mass., recently told the Military Traffic Management Command.
"I don’t know of any other industry in America that works with a four-day work week."
Boyle, who chairs the American Trucking Associations' Government Traffic Policy Committee, recently issued several challenges to Frank Galluzzo, director of MTMC's Distribution Analysis Center. Among other things, he asked Galluzzo to look at a weapons testing facility in Crane, Ind., where separate military commands have different work schedules. The Army works a five-day week while the Navy works a four-day week. If connections are missed, some deliveries are delayed three days.
Flexible schedules for federal workers are a big problem nationwide, Boyle said, noting that many places often don't have anyone to answer the phone. He also suggested that deliveries could be expedited by using e-mail to make unloading appointments.
"We don’t want trucks waiting around," Galluzzo responded. He urged truckers to join MTMC in identifying and eliminating time lost at transshipments points.
According to MTMC, reduced shipping times is a crusade for Galluzzo -- and one that has already yielded significant results in international freight. The agency says he has cut "dozens" of days from shipping times to Europe and Southwest Asia. The average time now from shipping order to receipt of freight between the U.S. and Europe is down to 56 days. Galluzzo's goal is 40 days.