'I'm a *anger here
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myself'
HOW MUCH MONEY do operators lose because customers give them imprecise delivery instructions? The trouble arises when the driver tries to find his ultimate destination.
Time and again I am stopped by lorry drivers wanting to know how to reach local works. While they appear to have been given the name of the firm and the town, it is left to chance whether they will actually find the place.
Recently I was taking a receipt for a gift to the local cornmunity council from a school in a cul-de-sac. A tractive unit and trailer were parked across the entrance. The driver, who asked whether he was in a certain road, was in fact in an extension of it. Our road pattern has been distorted by the construction of a bypass.
He was trying to find a factory. As it had the same name as the road he was in, he had been cheerfully directed to the road which had led him into the cul-de-sac, from which the warning sign had been mischievously removed.
As secretary of the community council I had produced a local guide with an updated map, and I had never heard of the factory on the driver's sheet. I suggested that he came into the school with me to see if the telephone directories would provide a clue.
The name of the factory did not strike a bell with any of the teachers; I tried the local alphabetical directory — there was nothing there. I tried the classified trades directory for firms dealing with the goods he was carrying. I tried under several classifications. No joy. The school had another trade directory published by an advertising firm, but the factory did not appear to be listed.
The head let me phone the community constable, who said he had never heard of the factory in our town. So it appeared that it could be in a neighbouring one. One of our major firms has its registered office given on letterheads in our township and its works in an adjoining town — not easy to find unless you know the road pattern.
The driver, as he was causing an obstruction, said he would go off and find a transport café, where he thought someone might put him right.
I only hope the driver was lucky. Back home, I looked at the alphabetical directories for surrounding areas. We happen to be near the boundary for several other telephone areas. The first one I opened gave the answer. The factory was in the outskirts of a town in the same administrative county. Part of the town, a sizeable place, has an area with the same name as our township. What was left out on the instruction sheet to the driver was that he had to go to that town before finding the factory in the area given the same name as our township.
How many hours and how many gallons of fuel are wasted over deliveries is anyone's guess. Three weeks ago in our local "Big Town" I was asked by a weary commercial driver, who had risked parking on double yellow lines in order to get directions where a big food depot was. He was right at the wrong end of the town. So he had to work his way round a complicated pattern of one-way streets, made worse by roadworks in the centre of the town, where a pedestrian scheme is being introduced. I am sure he never remembered all the "Turn Lefts" and "Turn rights," I told him.
Ironically, he had come from the motorway and he could have reached the food depot without getting caught in town traffic. Had the customer provided a map showing his destination both driver and customer would probably have been better satisfied.
As head of a large secondary school, which was extended to go comprehensive, I saw this sort of thing happen time and time again.
A major building project was in progress. Hence not only
were there deliveries for the various contractors about the place, but loads of furniture and stock were arriving for the extensions. The orders were sent out by the Education Office, which, on its requisi tions, not always in the clearest of writing, gave the name of the school needing the goods. It did not help that sometimes the orders were made out to be delivered at the school under its new name.
When we went comprehensive, we had to have a new name. The orders for equip ment issued by the Education Office did not always include the name of the road.
Sometimes materials for us arrived at other schools and had to be rerouted. The locals, unaware of the new name of the school, inevitably directed drivers to wrong schools.
On one occasion a load of 300 classroom chairs for seniors arrived at an infants' school. The caretaker put the driver right, and when the vehicle finally reached us, the children had gone home and our caretaker and his staff were getting the place ready or further education classes.
I had to go into the neighbouring park to recruit "volun tary" labour to get the chairs into the main building. We put them in the hall to be sorted out next morning. What I had forgotten was that an old-tyme dancing group used the hall that evening, and so I was to receive some irate phone calls that there had not been enough room for dancing.
During the summer holidays; I was asked by our main contractor to open up one wing of the school at 8pm for flooring to be laid by men travelling from south of London. They were going to do the job during the night, get some sleep somewhere and then travel for similar jobs in adjoining towns the next day.
At 11.05pm the phone went. I thought it might be my wife wanting to know where I was. It was, in fact, the man in charge of the floor covering layers. They had been caught up in heavy main-road traffic, coupled with a serious delay just as they went off the motorway, because an accident had blocked a road. They had reached the big town near us.
They had had no road directions from there. They had lost about an hour through being given wrong directions, and had been round the one-way system at least twice.
People had told them where "Big Boardie", "The Grammar" and "The Slow Learning Place" were. They had no clue how to get to our buildings but they had been mercifully given a telephone number by their employer.
The vehicle had stopped by a phone box five miles away. I gave directions. When they arrived I had to get to work and show them where toilets were and where they could brew tea, and, in the end, left them to it. Despite the wild-goose chase, I must say they did a good job. At 10am the following day they were putting their sleeping bags in the van, having worked at least half the night. They seemed surprised when I said I thought they ought to have been given better directions. The driver commented: "You get used to it."
It amazes me that for big orders firms do nut demand detailed directions from customers.
IS there a case for firms bluntly telling customers as a condition of supply that there will be a surcharge, if inadequate road directions to premises are given?
So often the reply is: "Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself."
• by R. D. Woodall