The Wednesday my whole distribution center fell apart

Last quarter I had a Wednesday where three drivers called out sick and our main loading dock belt went down by 10am. I had to reroute 12 deliveries through a backup hub 20 miles away and personally drive two runs myself to keep the major accounts from throwing fits. How do you all handle the domino effect when one tiny breakdown turns your entire day into a scramble?

2 comments

2 Comments

elizabeth_gonzalez1mo ago

Did your center not have a backup belt or a list of on-call drivers? My buddy runs a small warehouse two towns over and he had a day almost exactly like this last fall. The difference was his supervisor kept calling him every 20 minutes asking for updates, which made everything way more stressful. He agrees with you, @angela_dixon, that it comes with the territory, but he said the real killer is when the small problems pile up so fast you can't even think straight. By the end he had one account threatening to pull their contract and another asking for a full refund on a perishable load that sat too long.

angela_dixon1mo ago

Fair enough that this sounds like a rough day, but honestly it kind of sounds like you're making a bigger deal out of it than it really is. Drivers call out and belts break all the time, that's just logistics. You rerouted some stuff and drove a couple runs yourself, so what? That's basically the job description for a distribution lead. Nobody died and no accounts were permanently lost. Does your center really not have any backup plans for equipment failure or is this just one of those days you're choosing to blow out of proportion?