The Fourth of July is a fun-filled time for families, celebrated with fireworks, cookouts and parties. There will be lots of hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon and beer digested over the weekend. In fact, according to the National Sausage and Hot Dog Council (NHDSC) Americans are expected to eat 150 million hot dogs over the July 4th holiday alone. That’s a lot of dogs!
While you look forward to kicking back over this year’s Fourth of July holiday, spare a thought for the US transport operations industry faced with one of the biggest delivery scheduling challenges of the year.
Making 5 days’ worth of deliveries in 4 days combined with the increased volume of all those essential Fourth of July party ingredients makes the holiday season a delivery scheduling headache for transport operations across the USA.
In addition to balancing drivers, trucks and delivery times, transportation planners may face the extra challenge of low staffing levels with drivers or other members of the team taking extra holiday. And all that holiday traffic on the road will make getting deliveries to the store on time more challenging too.
Is your transport operation ready to deal with increased truckloads of food and drinks? Are your trucks able to navigate their daily routes, providing on-time performance even with an increase in congestion?
If you’re using delivery scheduling software then you may have already run what-if scenarios to work out the best way to handle increased volumes. If not, then try using last year’s data as a basis to predict 2016 volumes, and then re-calculate your optimal routes to see what extra resources will be needed. You might want to relax time windows or extend drivers’ shifts in order to get more product delivered in time. It’s also possible to apply increased congestion assumptions to get a truly accurate picture. If you haven’t done this already, there’s still time to do it ahead of the holiday and implement the changes to your transportation plan.
Let’s not forget about fireworks. During last year’s Fourth of July celebrations, Americans lit about 200 million pounds of fireworks, which when put together weighs more than the Washington Monument, according to the American Pyrotechnic Association. I don’t know about you, but when fireworks are scheduled in my town at a local high school football stadium, the entire population turns out, descending on local shopping areas and other close-by parking lots to set up picnic blankets or beach chairs to watch the fireworks– and massively clogging up roads for hours.
Do you know when and where Fourth of July parades are happening so your drivers can avoid delivering in that area at that time? Knowing where NOT to drive is helpful for any delivery operation.
Using Paragon Software’s routing and scheduling optimization solutions helps you prepare your transport operations for events like these. Transportation planners can use the calendar function in Paragon Route Control to create routes that comply with time and day-related road closures resulting from major public events. This allows drivers to better meet delivery schedules while adhering to road restrictions, ensuring on-time deliveries.
As with any holiday, retailers need to ensure that they can fulfill all of their customers’ needs whether they sell beer, hot dogs or fireworks. Using all the functionality in your delivery scheduling software will help you to make sure the convenience store, the garage and the out of town mall don’t run out of America’s favorite goodies.
If you’d like to find out how Paragon can help you with any of these challenges, do get in touch. One of our experienced team will be happy to talk through your planning operation with you. In the meantime, have a Happy Birthday USA!
