What a Good Transportation Management System Does During Your Busiest Hours
Peak hours differentiate average transport operations from exceptionally reliable ones. When the orders pile up and everything has to happen at once, that’s when you know what your systems are truly made of.
The average transport operation knows when its peak hours occur. Is it Monday morning when all the weekend’s cargo is left undone? Is it the afternoon time when all same-day orders come rushing in? Is it seasonal traffic that transforms a mundane Wednesday into an insane one? Regardless, those are the hours that show whether your operation can handle its promise.
When Everything Happens All At Once
Here’s what typically happens at peak hours: New orders keep coming in, and drivers are already on the road. Customers want to know about their deliveries, NOW. There are unforeseen delays (traffic, vehicle issues, delivery site access). Your management team needs to make fast decisions on determinations and can’t spare time hesitating about what should happen next.
But without proper systems, this means chaos. Dispatchers spend time on the phone. Drivers call in asking about their next stop. Customer service is inundated with inquiries about deliveries that should’ve already occurred. Management is asking what’s going on while trying to put out the flames.
Yet the problem isn’t usually effort; most transport teams work incredibly hard during peak hours. Instead, humans and basic tools can’t compute exponentially increased variables fast enough.
Intelligent Rerouting Without the Fuss
Good systems reroute jobs in real-time without requiring a manual person to figure it out alone. When an urgent delivery comes in during peak hours, the system assesses where all your drivers are, what they have on board, how much space remains, and their existing routes and determines the best and easiest way to pivot that new job in.
This is done in seconds—not the 15-20 minutes it may take a dispatcher to call every driver to ascertain what’s going on (let alone the time dispatchers have to take to answer calls from confused drivers). It also factors in elements humans overlook in a time crunch (who is closest to where the new pickup is? Who has the right truck style? Who has perishable knowledge?).
A good transportation management system also reroutes when there are unforeseen delays. If a driver hits traffic or a stop takes longer than anticipated, a competent system assesses if the driver can still make his other stops in a reasonable time and if not, who else can pick it up again easier.
Managing Driver Loads Before It Becomes a Problem
Peak times also mean some drivers are overloaded while others finish early—and that’s bad news for everyone involved. Overworked drivers aren’t happy with their performance; under-worked trucks unnecessarily cost money.
Proper systems monitor driver loading consistently. They assess how many jobs each driver has, estimated completion times, and limits due to space and hours worked. When things tip too far in either direction, systems flag it before it’s too late.
This reduces options where one driver is angry and rushing (which means mistakes) while another is twiddling his thumbs waiting for an unexpected job. The system can crunch the analytics of what all your drivers can do before a problem arises while factoring in all real-life conditions (driver hours permitted, style of truck, regions of expertise, specific needs for timed appointments).
Keeping Customers Informed Without Doing Extra Work
When peak time hours occur, inquiry volume goes up; everyone wants to know where everything is and when. This usually results in your employees fielding dozens of calls asking the same question: “Where’s my stuff?”
Better systems eliminate this manually. Customers get proactive notifications about where their stuff is going. And when delivery ETAs change (and they always do at peak times), they receive updated information without anyone needing to go customer by customer to provide knowledge.
This drastically reduces inbound calls during busy hours so your team can focus on responding to actual concerns rather than basic Q&As. Those who call do have more in-depth questions or real issues requiring human involvement.
Making Quick Decisions About Priorities
At peak times, everything is important—but not everything is important equally—and good systems help you make intelligent judgments quickly.
When your capacity is filled, the management system can tell you which delivery is on an absolute deadline, which customer means the most to your success, which jobs have service level agreements attached, and what cost exists with different determinations.
Instead of guessing on what makes sense to prioritize, you have quantitative data that shows you what’s best for your business goals. Sometimes it’s better to accommodate the larger customer; sometimes, it’s easier to align multiple smaller customers that reside nearby each other regardless of their identities. Good systems allow you to understand what’s best and how to justify your choice as appropriate and meaningful for all involved—not random or haphazardly applicable.
Dealing With Exceptions That Always Occur
When peak hours occur, exceptions happen. A receiver isn’t available for delivery; a truck breaks down; a driver calls in sick; access is blocked at one delivery point. This happens all the time—but it feels worse when you’re overworked already.
Good systems help your employees manage exceptions more quickly. If a delivery can’t be completed, automatically assessed are other potential drivers who can take it over immediately; possible rescheduled timeframes tomorrow; or whether it can be rescheduled entirely if it makes no sense at the present time. The software does the quick math assessment so your team can focus on decision-making and customer communication.
This is useful because exception responses during peak times often cause a domino effect; one unsuccessful delivery impacts the rest of that driver’s route which may impact others who may also need to be alerted to yesterday’s bad news today. Systems that can model that reality assess the bigger picture before determining how best to move forward with response considerations.
The Real Difference It Makes
Transport operations with quality systems handle peak periods much differently than those without proper systems. Their teams aren’t working on stress-stress-stress all day long every single time volume occurs as customers still receive dependable service during these peak periods—and the business truly grows without becoming unmanageable.
Thus, it’s not even perfectly vs poorly operating; it’s constantly firefighting versus relatively smooth operations with a caveat of obstacles and stresses that require hard work either way but fall under sanity-saving resources that will help you out down the line either way if you get more automated today than not.
Your peak times shouldn’t be the moments when there’s no service quality and your team dreads coming into work—they should be appropriately managed like any other well-oiled transport operation streamlining success!