Archived Black Thursday "Lull Trailer"

[thihan12]

Hey everybody, first time poster here. After skimming over the current black Thursday posts, I couldn't really find any good details about taking a "Lull trailer" on thanksgiving night. My store is planning on taking a truck at 10 pm Thursday night. I currently unload all of our GM trailers, but I have never been a part of a Lull trailer unload before. I'm assuming the process needs to be changed a little bit because of the high volume of guests on the floor. I'm just looking for any tips from anyone who has done this before at their store. Mainly things like how to manage the flow team or the most efficient ways to get the freight onto the floor and pushed correctly. I am a flow/backroom TM, but my Flow TL and Log ETL rely on me a lot to help them generate new and more efficient ideas pertaining to the unload/flow and backroom processes.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

 

[qmosqueen]

we also are getting a truck same day same time.

my guess is to unload onto flats and push 1 at a time and save lots of it for the next day.
No need to push toys as there will be way too many guests over there.

If you have a lot of dry grocery that will be easy to push as no one will be shopping there, also pets, paper and chemicals should be rather easy also.

my only advice is to go into the night screaming and running.

 

[SFSFun]

Last year we unloaded toys and everything on that side of the store onto flats and had a ton of hardlines TMs blitz them as we were unloading. They were stocking and coming back for another about as fast as we were filling them up.

Market/HBA was pretty dead, domestics was a bit of a challenge but we got through it.

Try to get the team pumped up more than normal with some music and energy drinks.

 

[Kartman]

Wot in bloody 'ell is a lull trailer???

 

[semantics]

Lull is suppose to take advantage of a drop in traffic during the night. How accurate that is and how long that will last is always iffy at my store. Last year it was completely off the store picked up when we came in and stayed strong, it was smaller traffic before we came in lol.

 

[signingminion]

We had one scheduled for Friday morning, we cancelled it.

 

[Retail Girl]

We're doing ours at 2am. There will be few guests in the store, so it will be just like a normal morning (if not easier).

 

[ElectronicsTM]

We are doing our GM trailer Thursday morning instead of waiting to do it after the store opens. In the past, when we did the trucks at 10 PM, we kept the whole truck palletized in the backroom and threw the entire flow team at one department at a time.

 

[Cat]

We took a truck last year. It didn't go well. The year prior we got the freezer/cooler food truck (my brain can not remember what the hell we call it) and I ended up getting pulled from electronics to go help them. I was supposed to leave at 8, I didn't get out until 10.

 

[tgtguy]

As of now we are taking a truck 2 am Friday morning . We did the same thing last year...by that time the store is pretty quiet.

 

[Noiinteam]

For the first time we are taking a truck Friday 4am and a double Saturday 2:30 am and 4:30 am. I think 1 of them will be cancelled. One can only hope!

 

[mrknownothing]

Thanksgiving/Black Friday is one of the few occasions that we don't get a truck and the overnight team is off. But we normally get a FDC truck on Fridays, so I'm not sure how that's gonna work. My store doesn't really quiet down overnight after the opening rush.

 

[Backroomkeycarrier]

Last year it went great for us. We started around midnight and there were barely any guests. We ran the truck as usual for the most part. You just have to try to get areas done faster and then move to the next area.

 

[Ashfromoldsite]

We have done it the last two years. You wheel the pallets to the floor and work them without bowling down the aisles. The old "brand" rule of no pallets and pallet jacks on the floor while we are open, went down the tubes when they moved stores to a 6am and 7:30am unload.

You won't have enough flats to only use those to work the truck. They will need them for hourlys also.