Moving under the cover of darkness
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IF YOU WORK in the road transport industry the chances are that you or some of your staff work shifts. It may well not be straight day and night shifts, indeed, it might just be the early turn in the office'' once a week. But that's still a shift from the normal working hours.
Broadly speaking, companies will operate a shift system for one of two reasons — through necessity or through choice. These companies that work' shifts necessarily usually do so because they provide a service that extends outside normal working hours.
Bus or coach services are the best example of this. The companies that choose to work shifts find that the advantages of the system outweigh the disadvantages.
As a whole, the road transport industry tends to use the shift system quite extensively in some shape or form. As a service industry it has to adopt a more flexible attitude to hours of work than straightforward manufacturing industry.
A recent survey found that the transport and communications business was fourth in the league table of shift working with 42 per cent of its full-time male employees receiving a shift premium. (Top of the table were mining and quarrying, metal manufacture and coal and petroleum products.) Road transport shift working primarily applies to drivers, fitting staff and warehousemen, but is rarely restricted to them_ Supervisory staff are usually needed, either in the shape of a night foreman or a member of management being present or on call at home.
The term "shift" covers a multitude of sins. It can mean days or nights (two 12-hour shifts or three eight-hour shifts) in its most extreme form, either permanent or rotating weekly or fortnightly,
Shifts don't necessarily mean 24 hours a day working: the -double-daysystem gives 16 hours coverage. with two eighthour shifts — such as 6am to
2pm, and 2pm to lOpm.
Some systems which cover the entire 24 hours will shut down over the weekend while others keep going to give 100 per cent continuity.
Other types of shifts commonly found in the road transport industry include the "'twilight shift(typically 5pm to lOpm and worked by housewives doing orderprocessing or other administration) and the staggered start, which is used by many coach companies, with drivers reporting for work throughout the day as their pick-ups dictate.
Flexible working hours could in some ways come under the shift heading as they do give slight flexibility of start and finish time around a central core period, although they do not warrant shift premiums.
Although shift work may not sound that attractive, it does hold some advantages for the employee and many choose to work apparently unsocial hours.
The obvious bonus is the extra payment that the shift premium gives. The survey found that the average shift payment in the road transport industry was £3.50 per week.
Other features that shiftworkers find in favour of working outside normal hours include a more relaxed atmosphere, greater informality, an easier journey to work because they are travelling outside the rush hour and the bonus of freedom during the daytime.
Disadvantages are of course the disruption of the social life and family home_ Points in favour of rotating shift work or early start/late finish on a rota are mainly that it breaks up the routine, adds a little variety, and that the rota can be devised so that the irregular day suits the individual employee.
From the company point of view the pros and cons of shift working are more complex_ Looking firstly at the benefits. the main one is better utilisation of assets.
If expensive capital items such as vehicles, buildings, workshop and maintenance equipment can be used for longer periods each day, then their fixed costs are spread further and so average costs are reduced.
And using the facilities more intensely may also mean that you can get away with a smaller fleet or workshop than if you were operating a single shift.
Working a night shift can also speed up the whole transport operation. ,A night trunk operation can mean goods are 300 or 400 miles further on than if they stayed the night at the depot. Assembling loads at night ready for loading the next morning could also cut a whole day out of the delivery cycle.
A night shift for fitters can mean a fleet's downtime is radically cut, with the repairs or servicing carried out during the nighttime when the vehicle would be standing idle anyway. It may also mean for instance„ that one vehicle lift rather than two is sufficient. Like most things, there are of course a number of drawbacks connected with the introduction of the shift system. Probably the 'largest expense will be the extra wage bill incurred by paying shift premiums or, in some cases, employing say, a completely new set of drivers to work a night shift. As the depot or other premises will be in use during the night, heating and electricity bills will also be proportionately higher.
If very limited night working is introduced, such as one or two night-trunking vehicles, .then security at the depot may have to be provided to open up the gates or the warehouse for the trunker. Some operators will give keys to the driver, but will often pay a bonus for this responsibility.
Where two or more shifts are introduced there will always be a need for communication between them The expression "communication problemmay sound like fashionable sociological jargon. but it can be a
ery real problem.
The day shift may leave a ehicle to be serviced by the ight fitters, the night shift oesn't get the message or lisunderstands it., and so the ehicle is left untouched — it oes happen.
This sort of thing can escalate 'Ito a workforce divided against :self, one shift blaming the ther for poor or slow work.
To get round this problem, le foreman will usually hand ver control to the incoming -Ian, hopefully explaining the osition and progress to date. k I te rnatively, a proportion of the rst shift can overlap with the econd shift for a couple of ours, giving the necessary 'ansitional link.
Generally, any shift system rill mean it is very difficult to 3Ik to all the employees at once they are never all there at the ame time! This means union leetings can be difficult to rrange, as are any other mass -ieetings.
Similarly, problems can arise ,hen an employee on one shift rants to meet a manager on the ther shift, or vice versa.
The lack of facilities that exist night is another thing that lust be considered if you introuce a night shift. The canteen rill be closed for instance — a mall point unless you happen ) be a hungry night-shift forkerl Although coin-operated utomatic vending machines do offer a variety of products (a mixture of tea and coffee!) these days, they are still an inadequate substitute.
Where shifts changeover in the early morning, public transport may not be running, so the company might consider operating a minibus for the employees.
Supervision of the night shift calls for careful thought. As mentioned earlier, many employees like the easy-going atmosphere at nights. If it's relaxed because there aren't so many interruptions, that's good; if it's so because the men can skive off work then that's not so good!
Having weighed up the pros and cons of introducing a shift system, the road transport employer may not be able to implement it as much (or little) as he wishes. His transport movements will inevitably interact with those of others when the vehicles are making deliveries or collections.
.So, if these people aren't working a night shift then the operator can't either. This kind of problem means some of the theoretical advantages of shifts can't be realised in practice.
For this reason, many haulage operators have to restrict their night-trunking movements to inter-depot work where the necessary arrangements are easier to make.
There have been studies carried out on the effect of shift work on the employee's health. The largest threat comes from rotating shifts when people alternate between day and night work or early and late starts.
In these circumstances a person's circadian rhythm (the socalled body clock) is upset, as happens in cases of jet-lag. ,Sleep can be lost and stress increased which can lead to a higher accident rate.
Although this is all proven it should not be overplayed, and shift work is by no means a major threat to health. Indeed, if the employee likes working shifts then there could well be a net benefit.
The most ambitious example . of radical shift working on road .transport operation was Operation Moondrop. This was a scheme for urban shop distribution work at night which was tried in London in late 1967 and early 1968.
It was sponsored by the Transport Co-ordination Council for London (a GLC body) and initially backed by 25 manufacturing companies making deliveries to around 120 grocery shops and supermarkets.
Some of the largest chain. stores in this field — such as Tesco, Waitrose and MacFisheries — participated by .accepting deliveries during the night, so the scheme got some high-level encouragement.
The biggest benefit in the scheme went to the manufacturers who could complete delivery rounds far more quickly in the virtually traffic-free city streets. In the long term the double shifting of the lorries might have meant they could even reduce their fleet size (or take on more work with the same fleet).
But the shops who were accepting the night deliveries weren't gaining that much themselves, while having much of the extra costs to bear. These were mostly the costs of bringing in staff during the night. to accept the delivery and check it in.
This also posed a security problem — a large supermarket with its back entrance open was being manned by just two or three staff. Thus the store had to pay these staff a responsibility bonus in addition to a night-shift premium.
As early as Day One of Operation Moondrop's night deliveries, the shop-workers' union USDAW predicted that the scheme would fail unless more attention was paid to the problems it caused at the retail end.
Unfortunately, this prediction proved right, and just six months later, in June 1 968, Operation Moondrop was eclipsed. The final sentence in a news story from Commercial Motor of June 28, 1 968, testified: "Moondrop has proved .uneconomic for the retailers taking part."
As well as being the best example of the ambitious use of the shift system in road transport, Moondrop also gave the best demonstration of what limits the potential of the shift system its irkteraction with others who cannot or will not join in.
But the demonstration was not wasted. Some of the stores that took part recognised the advantages of night deliveries for their own transport fleets and so started on internal transport night shift — which again illustrates the point that too often shift systems have to be limited to operations over which one company has total control.
At present, many manufacturing companies are seeking to cut out shifts as demand for their product falls as the recession bites harder.
But those lucky companies whose product or services are in demand (and coach services have tended to do well in previous difficult periods) could consider the use of some sort of shift system to get extra productivity from their vehicles, equipment or premises.
If the shifts are purely internal, then the practical difficulties of implementing them should be surmountable and the benefits worthwhile.
And the more using a night shift, the easier it will be for external transport operations such as deliveries and collections to be carried out, opening up a whole new area of haulage efficiency.