I’ve always thought I am fortunate to be a Gen-Xer. It has been fascinating to see the progression of technology.
I love new technologies and how we can benefit from them. It drives my wife nuts. She doesn’t understand why new tech has such a pull on me.
In high school I took the first-ever computer programming course offered. I was in Grade 11, but it was a Grade 12 course. Yeah, I couldn’t wait. One day in class, I told the teacher we could use computers to turn things on and off electronically. No mercury switches or coils.
Coupled with my love of numbers, I saw how we could streamline and manage data that came with computers. We used to hear that most of life’s problems could be solved with more information. Ignorance was bad.
It turns out that’s not the problem.
Today, we have information spewing out everywhere. We are buried in data. One of my favorite radio host’s, Lauren McNabb from The Start on CJOB 680 in Winnipeg went for a ride with me after the death of a young man who was killed by a truck driver. There were allegations that trucks weren’t governed, that we were running wild and had no controls to keep the public safe from us.
She asked about Hours-of-Service, speed checks, limiters, cell phone use and how much data is generated by us. We rode around the perimeter for a couple of hours in my semi while she observed from the passenger seat.
Too much complexity
Every truck these days comes out of the factory with more technology than the shuttles on the Appollo space missions. We have information overload. We don’t do anything in a simple way. Not a single thing. Have you looked at a Bill of Lading lately? It’s rarely an easy-to-read document, and you’re expected to sign it without reading it.
How about this: Show up at a shipper with your reference number for the load. Oops, not that one. Try the load number. Nope, not that one either. Call dispatch. That’s all the numbers you were given. Go back to shipping to get met with “We keep telling them we need the number that starts with XYZ”. Call dispatch again. Oh, that number! It’s on a different screen.
You know what was so unique about that teacher in high school? He was brilliant. Maybe even a genius, but when he spoke and explained things he put it very simply. You learned.
Why do we need to make things so complex? This is not contradicting my love of numbers and technology. But our life should get simpler using technology. Not more complex.
I blame egotistical people who love to make things complicated so they can look smart. Or people trying to justify their jobs by making things so convoluted that no one really understands their work.
We have a fascination with complexity. We are forgetting what our jobs really are.
Getting back to basics
We need to get back to the basics. Trucking companies haul freight. We don’t need five different numbers in a system to pick up a load. I don’t care what you have in the background, just keep it clear for those of us on the front lines.
Mechanics should be turning wrenches, or diagnosing equipment, not writing a biography on the truck and trying to justify to warranty why a part is defective. There are literally jobs that take six hours instead of one because of complex rules, when everyone knows the real issue.
I spent half a day during which the large company couldn’t figure out who needed to receive my freight. I got bounced around four different yards in Edmonton and had to go through the shipper’s orientation at each one. Guess who paid me for my time. Ha! All of those yards were within sight of each other on a couple city blocks.
This runaround happened because they had so much data, they couldn’t sort out the proper information. It’s really not that hard to have computers filter out the noise and update all pertinent people, but it rarely happens.
I’ve had freight show up at my home with no way to unload. The driver said they didn’t know it was a tailgate-required load. So, I looked at their Bill of Lading. Yup, it says right here. Show it to the driver. He said there were so many things listed on the Bill of Lading that he didn’t read it.
That’s the real issue.
We get caught up with having all this info and forget what the job really is supposed to be.
Let the computers do the hard work in the background so we can focus on our job.