Santa's tittle helper
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Christmas is coming and the country needs presents, food and alcohol for the festivities. CM spends a day with a traffic planner at CM Downton to find out how our shelves get filled Words: George Barrow Images: Alisdair Cusick If you wake up on Boxing Day with a sore head, you might be able to blame CM Downton traffic co-ordinator Chris Hamblin, because he will have been working tirelessly to ensure thousands of bottles of wine, beer and spirits make it to the shops before 25 December.
The Christmas period is understandably one of the busiest times of the year for hauliers, and that is certainly the case at the base of Gloucestershire haulier CM Downton. Peak volumes across its network are up to three times that of the quieter periods, much of it down to our predilection as a nation for a drink or two.
"For a lot of people, Christmas is the only time they will buy alcohol — and they tend to buy a lot. For us that can mean a huge peak in demand and a very quiet January and February," Hamblin says.
Two rows of desks with a dozen chairs and computers fill what was the former farmhouse home of the Downton family, and is now the dedicated hub of the business. Surrounded by the director's offices, the traffic room is at the buzzing centre of the set-up, with constant chatter and ringing phones.
The day is already under way, with the current shift of planners having started their day between Sam and 7am. Hamblin explains that between each shift there is a handover, and an email report from the night shift, detailing any problems and plans for the day ahead. Fortunately, today is shaping up to be just a regular day leading up to the Christmas rush, but there are still plenty of jobs, drivers and trucks to manage.
The team starts by trying to assign any unplanned work for the day as well as its 'dummy jobs' (late finishing jobs or drivers that are nearly out of hours) to fill in the schedule so that all loads are accounted for.
"It starts with going over the day's traffic diary to check for unallocated work," says Hamblin. "At any one time, there could be 15-30 dummy jobs on the screen, so it is a lot to get your head around. We look at the finishing or end point of the load we have to plan and go from there by planning loads for today and tomorrow. Each planner is in charge of approximately 30 trucks, and at this time of year we are at full capacity, so it is constant all of the time. We're running more than 150 trucks at Gloucester, and we've added 10 extra for the Christmas period.
"This is the busiest time of the year, and you have just got to cover the work. It's a short month, and it is all about servicing the customers. December is a completely service-driven month, so it's not uncommon for us to have to run empty — we look at the whole big picture," he says.
With Hamblin estimating that his phone rings up to 500 times a day, working as a traffic planner over the Christmas period could arguably be one of the busiest and most stressful jobs in the business. However, with last year's Royal wedding and this year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, the team has had plenty of practice for the seasonal rush.
"You get an adrenaline rush when it is busy. I don't like it when it's quiet. It's been an exceptionally busy year with the Jubilee and the Olympics. During the Jubilee, there were so many street parties it just went mad with the wines and spirits. The best part of the job is definitely when it all looks neat and matches up [on the traffic diary]. I've been doing this job for 11 years and I've never been bored."
Inter-depot logistics Moving loads between 12 sites around the UK means there is also a lot of inter-depot logistics to plan, much of which falls to Hamblin. "I orchestrate the trunking," he says. "If a load is coming to you at midnight, you need to make sure there is a guy there to receive it." Although there are just six to eight of these loads a night — usually between Gloucester and the Runcorn depot — it's all part of a traffic planner's job to act as a link between the office, its depots and the drivers.
"I talk to Runcorn more than any other depot. Sometimes you'll be left with a challenging [delivery] time from one of the multiples because someone else has got all of the good slots, so anything for the North with a night slot will get trunked up to Runcorn," Hamblin says.
For CM Downton planners, the phone calls don't just stop with the drivers: a typical day will also see the planners talking to several of their clients. Hamblin continues: "We are traffic planners, account managers and customer service representatives all in one. It's quite unique, but you get a better relationship with the customer as you speak to them all of the time. We deal with customers on a one-to-one basis. They like the continuity we give them."
The job doesn't always go to plan and unforeseen problems do happen. Breakdowns are infrequent, but any problems go straight through to the workshop. The planners are kept updated and, if it is a load that needs to be delivered at a certain time, they have been known to do a transfer if possible. It's just another part of Hamblin's day-to-day job of making, what he calls, "the jigsaw" fit. It's often the people and not the logistics who pose the biggest problem for the traffic planner, but Hamblin can appreciate the difficulty of being a driver.
He says: "The hardest bit is definitely keeping the drivers happy. Keeping the trampers happy is particularly difficult. They want to be out all week, and sometimes it's just not possible. Trying to convince them to our way of thinking can be hard. Drivers are on their own with their thoughts all day; if they could see what we're doing and we could see what they put up with, maybe there would be better understanding. Communication is the key, we just tell them to do what they legally can, and to stay in touch." Watching Hamblin going about his business, as he whizzes up and down the traffic diary adjusting loads and drivers, is mesmerising. The only time his flow is broken is with regular checks to the live tracking map. Each of the CM Downton trucks is tagged and tracked across the UK, with detailed information available on each vehicle. From here, Hamblin can work out drivers' hours and, as the day goes on, plan for the driver's next load.
The current traffic diary system has been in place since 1992, when it was written as a bespoke package for the business. Since then, other elements have been added — including the tracking — and the system's complexity has increased. Plans are afoot to modernise the system, and Hamblin is keen to add live trailer tracking. This, he says, would particularly help with the newspaper and magazine customers, which are very time-sensitive, as well as with trailer maintenance.
Repositioning loads The day's jigsaw is nearly complete, but looking at his loads Hamblin spots some new additions for later in the week —10 back from the North East to Gloucester. As he scans through his list of more than 300 jobs, Hamblin gradually fills in some of the dummy runs and repositions his loads to accommodate the jobs. But there's a hitch — he's out of trucks in the area and still has five loads to go.
A glance over his shoulder and the problem looks solved. Hamblin has spotted some job sheets for several loads of waste on the planning board, and adds them to his schedule, routing them up to Runcorn later that day so that they are at least roughly at the right end of the country.
Hamblin and his colleagues make the job look easy, but Christmas and the UK's unquenchable thirst will keep them busy over the next few days. To be a traffic planner, it is clear you need patience, a thorough knowledge of geography, quick thinking and plenty of stamina — particularly at this time of year. So as you open your presents on Christmas Day and tuck into your turkey dinner, consider raising a glass to the traffic planners who've worked tirelessly to make it all happen. • A game of common sense Distribution director Rob Emery is the man in charge of the CM Downton traffic office. As a former planner for the company, he knows the job all too well.
"It's a game of common sense," he says. "If all these pieces fit at the end of the day, you can think 'hey, that's been a good day'. But there is always a lot of fine-tuning and filtering involved with the work. We try to get them to reduce the dead mileage as much as possible, and they have to think about the pence per mile cost of their loads. It's a tough job — but if I told them all that they had to be here until midnight, I don't think they would complain. Come the busier periods of the year, our empty running increases, but we have to service the customers. We wouldn't have got where we are without planners, especially at this time of year."
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