Who among us hasn't traveled down the information highway? The mere fact that you are reading this blog entry lets me know you are a frequent traveler of one, if not many, of the hi-tech devices that are available to us every day to use. Craig and I were delighted when his company finally decided to save money during these hard economic times, and put payroll information on the Internet, instead of mailing it to our home, which by the way, we never saw until months later when we finally went home to retrieve our mail. Recently, they have gone one step further into cost saving ideas, by cutting out paying postage and FedEx charges, having the TWT drivers start scanning their trip information ie: bills of lading, receipts, seal reports, etc into scanners that they have placed at all the company yards.
This caused us to stop and give pause to the thought that there will soon be a time, when they have the System/flatbed drivers, who number upward to 800, also start scanning their packets after the first of the year. Further more, the wait time at the one lone scanner at each yard could add up to quite a delay, especially on those time sensitive loads when you don't have the extra time to stand around and wait for your turn. Since we used to scan and email all the broker information when we were on the boat fleet directly from our truck, we thought it would be worth looking into getting a scanner again.
A quick phone call into the department in charge of this new scanner procedure at first had Craig talking to an employee who wasn't sure if Craig was going to be complaining about the scanner and was quite apprehensive when Craig said he had some questions. Her tone immediately changed to excitement when Craig asked if we could use our own scanner and send in the information by email. Evidently, they are hoping that more drivers take on Craig's attitude, and were prepared with a form questionnaire to fill out via email, and then a practice run of scanning and emailing in two test trips and we were officially set up to go online.
After sending in our first official trip packet via the scanner, we sent in a message to the person in charge asking if there was a confirmation we would receive that the trip in fact was accepted into the system. We promptly got a reply back that since we were the first ones in the company to actually use their own scanner, that they had not thought of that, and that the computer guy was busy working on it at that very moment. Let's hope being first to drive on this information highway with the company will be free of any major pot holes or road blocks. I guess we'll find out just how well it works next payday.
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