TLs focusing too much on truck?

Joined
Oct 18, 2014
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Anyone else gets a little annoyed when most of the TL focus 90%+ on getting the truck pushed vs 10% everything else? I know truck is important but so is setting POGs, filling endcaps, price change etc. Sales planners for example they wait till the last 2 days to start setting 10 salesplanners. I have too many of those TLs at my store right now.

/rant
 
Anyone else gets a little annoyed when most of the TL focus 90%+ on getting the truck pushed vs 10% everything else? I know truck is important but so is setting POGs, filling endcaps, price change etc. Sales planners for example they wait till the last 2 days to start setting 10 salesplanners. I have too many of those TLs at my store right now.

/rant
Tl’s have a choice. Doing opu or truck. Oh wait! Add the guests too.
 
Yeah I've always felt that my store cared more about truck push than anything else. When I was first hired truck was mostly done by like 10 am. Then the rest of the day was reshop, zoning and guests.

Now reshop sits for days if not weeks and zoning is spotty, especially in some departments. They will let Style reshop get so bad in favor of truck and I don't really get it. That is good merchandise that could be sold, but instead it languishes in carts and on racks, including clearance which often goes zero before it gets put back out. That's money sitting there.
 
Anyone else gets a little annoyed when most of the TL focus 90%+ on getting the truck pushed vs 10% everything else? I know truck is important but so is setting POGs, filling endcaps, price change etc. Sales planners for example they wait till the last 2 days to start setting 10 salesplanners. I have too many of those TLs at my store right now.

/rant
Because the other things are easier to ignore. If you don't push the truck, then you can't unload the next truck. If you can't unload the next truck, then you have to cancel a truck. If you cancel a truck, you're going to have your OD and DSD breathing down your neck as to why.

It's a lot easier to get away with red metrics for most other things.
 
My store is the complete opposite ignore the truck and worry about the zone and 1 for 1s so now we’re constantly behind in freight.

At least that mess is hidden from the guest. I bet your salesfloor looks really nice. And your backroom isn't stuffed to the rafters (outside of the unworked freight, lol).
 
In my store they worry more about Out of Stocks because that is something corporate can easily see.

The funny thing is our seasonal out of stocks are huge because no one want to climb the 12 foot ladder isn't anchored like the ones in our aisles.


these fit down most aisles but your PML may hate you if you bang into anything. On second thought…
 


these fit down most aisles but your PML may hate you if you bang into anything. On second thought…


Same with my PML. Apparently if you bang the base or side metals, you have to take that whole section apart to fix it. Can't blame him.
 
Same with my PML. Apparently if you bang the base or side metals, you have to take that whole section apart to fix it. Can't blame him.
Oooh there’s a doo hickey they can attach to the bent upright and straighten them out. But if you bubba smash then just… de Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.
 
Customers don't buy price changes. They don't buy salesplanners and they don't buy pogs.

They buy product. Product comes on the truck, and if you don't stock it then your high margin fast movers become zero margin out of stocks, and your profitability plummets.

Not to say the other aspects are unimportant, they are just objectively less important than stocking freight.
 
Customers don't buy price changes. They don't buy salesplanners and they don't buy pogs.

They buy product. Product comes on the truck, and if you don't stock it then your high margin fast movers become zero margin out of stocks, and your profitability plummets.

Not to say the other aspects are unimportant, they are just objectively less important than stocking freight.

this mindset is kinda the problem in a lot of stores. none of the things you mentioned are less important than the others.

if you don’t work your price change, the items won’t scan correctly and you’ll run into weights and measures issues, or you’ll make it right at POS (affecting margin). if you don’t set pogs or salesplanners on time, new/special buy product doesn’t get sold. if you don’t work your one for ones and especially your out of stocks, your salesfloor will also be empty.

it’s about finding a balance between all of these tasks, and what that looks like is a little bit different in each store and also is different in each workcenter. a hypothetical store could come clean on truck every day, but if it’s at the expense of everything else then they aren’t really operating successfully. it’s okay to roll a little truck to make sure that everything else gets done too.
 
this mindset is kinda the problem in a lot of stores. none of the things you mentioned are less important than the others.

if you don’t work your price change, the items won’t scan correctly and you’ll run into weights and measures issues, or you’ll make it right at POS (affecting margin). if you don’t set pogs or salesplanners on time, new/special buy product doesn’t get sold. if you don’t work your one for ones and especially your out of stocks, your salesfloor will also be empty.

it’s about finding a balance between all of these tasks, and what that looks like is a little bit different in each store and also is different in each workcenter. a hypothetical store could come clean on truck every day, but if it’s at the expense of everything else then they aren’t really operating successfully. it’s okay to roll a little truck to make sure that everything else gets done too.
With respect - they are not equally important.

Now, if you asked me to choose setting pogs/doing price changes or stocking... domestics? Pogs all day. In that sense I agree it's important to strike a balance.

But softlines or hba? Huge margin, and traffic drivers. Customers come to the store to purchase these key items, and if they aren't in stock, they don't buy anything. It has a huge impact on basket size. I would choose these over literally anything.

I would also put zoning or 1x1s high on the list as well. Big impact on customer retention.

I'm not sure I would call any store successful if it wasn't completing it's workload, but in my eyes the measure of retail success is an intersection of profitability and customer satisfaction.
 
my store is an overnight store but in January we were hit HARD with COVID we had like half the normal amount of overnight crew. We had to decline the truck. How does that work? do we just get the product again another day?
 
my store is an overnight store but in January we were hit HARD with COVID we had like half the normal amount of overnight crew. We had to decline the truck. How does that work? do we just get the product again another day?
The product always comes in eventually. They can either cancel a truck and that product will come in on other trailers or they can move the trailer to a new day.
 
my store is an overnight store but in January we were hit HARD with COVID we had like half the normal amount of overnight crew. We had to decline the truck. How does that work? do we just get the product again another day?

I can speak to this one! I did this quite a few times while supporting stores in bad shape.

Declining a truck after it has arrived -> Usually they drop the truck in a spare bay or in your lot and you stock it when you get to it.

Declining a truck before it comes but after it's packed -> seen two scenarios here, truck still comes and it just turns into the first one I listed, or the DC holds the filled truck until you tell them send it, usually in the form of two trucks. Or option 3, you wait too long and they send it anyway.
 
The product always comes in eventually. They can either cancel a truck and that product will come in on other trailers or they can move the trailer to a new day.
If a truck is cancelled it isn’t being off loaded here. It’s sitting in our yard to be rescheduled and delivered. They cancel a 1500 piece truck on Tuesday then the store is receiving that 1500 piece truck on Thursday along with the other truck scheduled for Thursday
 
If a truck is cancelled it isn’t being off loaded here. It’s sitting in our yard to be rescheduled and delivered. They cancel a 1500 piece truck on Tuesday then the store is receiving that 1500 piece truck on Thursday along with the other truck scheduled for Thursday
I dont work at a dc but i was under the impression that if you cancel a truck it would then change what would be loaded into your next trailer not that anything would be unloaded.
 
Reshop? Costco is terrible, asshole customers (someI. I saw a package of chicken breasts sitting on top of the Chock Full Of Nuts cans of coffee last week.
 
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