Quality Improvement

CASE 5-1

Hardee Transportation

Jim O’Brien of Hardee Transportation has his hands full with the requests from his largest

customer. However, a new and possibly greater issue has presented itself to Jim:

the new hours-of-service rules. Hardee’s freight lanes and customer pickup and delivery

(PUD) operations are set to reflect the previous 10 hours of maximum drive time

for his drivers. The dispatch centers and bobtail patterns to service customer trailer

pools are also set up on the previous rules.

Jim’s customers don’t necessarily agree with his concerns. They argue that drivers

will actually have more continuous drive time under the new regulations. They also argue

that the reduced on-duty hours for drivers will reduce driver fatigue and result in

fewer accidents, lowering Hardee’s operating costs. Jim doesn’t agree. Even though

driving hours are increased, total driving time might actually be reduced. If PUD times

are increased at certain customer locations, driving time is reduced to comply with the

14-hour on-duty time.

This is a great concern for Jim because some of his largest customers have the longest

PUD times. Plus, some of these customers also require that the driver bobtails to

their shipping locations. Jim has approached his sales team with the request that they

require their customers to reduce loading and unloading times. If they can’t, Hardee

has no choice but to either increase detention charges or seriously consider dropping

those customers. Obviously, these two options were not well-received by the sales organization.

Sales perceived these actions to be against Hardee’s service strategy and were

fearful that some customers may rebel.

CASE QUESTIONS

1. Using the information in this chapter, how would you tell Jim to proceed?