inbound
Schneider offers new drivers a leg up
Despite today’s high unemployment levels, truckload carriers continue to have
difficulty recruiting and retaining drivers. Paying a few more pennies per mile
than a competitor does is no longer enough, so carriers are getting increasingly creative in their attempts to get qualified people behind the wheel.
One of the more interesting ideas was
announced recently by Schneider National Inc.
The Green Bay, Wis.-based truckload and logistics
giant will offer up to $6,000 in tuition reimbursement to individuals who graduate from driving
school, earn their Commercial Drivers License
(CDL), and then go to work for Schneider.
To qualify for the program, drivers must be
hired by Schneider within 60 days of graduation, the company said. Drivers will be reimbursed at a rate of $150 per month. Schneider
said its program would cover the full cost of many truck driving schools.
Schneider hopes the program will encourage more people to enter the profession. “It helps students overcome a big hurdle in starting a driving career—
the cost of attending an accredited truck driving school,” said Mike Hinz, a
Schneider vice president, in a statement.
The median annual salary for Schneider’s drivers ranges from $42,611 to
$51,983, according to the company. That is considered in line with pay scales
in the rest of the truckload industry. ;
Inventory on the fly
Interroll to build “Centre of Excellence”
in Georgia
PHOTO COURTES Y OF SCHNEIDER NATIONAL
As we’ve recently reported, makers of material handling equipment can take
some of the credit for the recent increase in U.S. manufacturing output and
jobs. That’s because many of them have expanded existing plants or built new
ones in the past year or two.
The latest example comes from The Interroll Group, the Swiss manufacturer of pallet- and container-flow equipment, conveyors, sorters, and associated
parts and controls. Interroll has broken ground on a 93,000-square-foot manufacturing and showroom complex at Paulding Commerce Park in Hiram,
Ga., just outside Atlanta. The new facility will produce pallet-flow storage
solutions for Interroll’s North American customers and selected markets in
South America. The $10 million operation, which will initially employ 70
associates, is expected to be completed in 10 months.
The new facility will be what Interroll calls a “Regional Centre of
Excellence.” According to the company, each center focuses on a specific product area and is responsible for product management, research and development, production, strategic procurement, and logistics as well as providing
technical support for local production, assembly, and service companies. The
ISO-certified centers also test products for customers.
The Paulding facility will be Interroll’s second such center in the United
States. A similar operation located in Wilmington, N.C., makes conveyor
rollers, roller drives, and drum motors. ;
We in the logistics profession
tend to think of transportation
companies solely as service
providers, not as shippers. But as
an article by Tara Titcombe in
the April 2012 issue of US
Airways’ in-flight magazine suggests, airlines have to handle
inventory, warehousing, and
delivery just like their cargo customers do.
US Airways operates four distribution centers (in Charlotte,
N.C.; Phoenix, Ariz.; and
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pa.)
that handle maintenance stores
for the airline’s fleet. The
Charlotte DC, which is the
largest of the four, keeps about
150,000 parts on hand and
processes about 550 spare parts
requests each day. According to
DC Manager Tim Everhart, they
are processed based on their level
of urgency. In 2011, the
Charlotte facility shipped out
some 1.5 million orders.
Large parts and oversized
items are stored in racks. Small
parts are stored in a six-aisle,
high-bay automated storage and
retrieval system (AS/RS) that
measures 100 feet long and 60
feet high. Workers enter the
desired part’s tracking number
into the AS/RS’s computer, and
cranes retrieve the appropriate
storage box. The cranes then
place the boxes on a conveyor for
transport to the employee’s
workstation.
What about after the orders
leave the DC? Everhart said that
US Airways is so good at tracking
passengers’ luggage that it has
integrated its baggage-tracking
system into the warehouse to
keep tabs on parts delivery. ;
