HCTs

[funkflex55]

I signed into a HCT duty as I had enough of driving for Royal Mail. The few estates near the office are covered by HCT and it works really well.

I actually don’t see them doing away with the HCTs especially with DPR routes and the advantage of them basically having zero maintenance and no fuel costs.

And no pollutants!

That's debatable! If we all start pushing around HCTs they're powered by people. Those people need to ingest and digest more calories which will lead to extra trumping. That trumping contains methane which according to the green agenda cult damages the atmosphere hence the push to reduce/stop meat consumption

[Funiculaire]

This is an interesting topic I might have some unique insight into as an ex planner (left RM within the last year).

The business were adamant throughout the recent revision process thet they wanted to avoid lapsing/removing HCT duties to save hours where possible because they wanted to remove vans to save money (a typical van costs RM about £6500/year to run).

However the planning community and most managers view HCT's as inefficient because they have a limited capacity, you have to find someone to do the heavy and large, and they are unsuitable for certain terrain (large hills for example). In short, they are a pain in many instances, though in some areas that are covered by DPR routes they work quite well.

The main issues though are capacity and the travel time to get to the first delivery point.

There were some suggestions that offices should start designing some HCT duties to have very little indoor work, but instead do two "bursts" of delivery (3 hours of delivery, back to the office for meal break and refill the HCT, then back out on delivery for another 3 hours) but in reality this is wildly impractical and was suggested by someone who doesn't really understand the reality of deliveries.

Ultimately, they work very well in many areas, but they are also open for abuse by lazy postmen who use them to limit how much delivery work they can be given and incompetent managers let that happen instead of arranging for bag drops.

They will never be removed completely, and my experience was that units that are generally run fairly well use them effectively, and units that are run poorly hate them!

[Mr Rush]

There were some suggestions that offices should start designing some HCT duties to have very little indoor work, but instead do two "bursts" of delivery (3 hours of delivery, back to the office for meal break and refill the HCT, then back out on delivery for another 3 hours) but in reality this is wildly impractical and was suggested by someone who doesn't really understand the reality of deliveries.

Very interesting insights. I always thought P&L should work this way. If we could hop on a bus back to the office for meal relief 20+ years ago it should be trivial to do it now. Of course, more conveyance time is less delivery time.

[Nickvilla20]

The HCT rounds in my office work really well it also helps that the manager won’t let any of us take the piss when it come to the oversize to.

Personally if I have the space for it then it goes in the trolly and sometimes I hang the bag off the back if I need extra capacity. There is even a few times on light days I’ve left no oversize at all and if I see the driver out there I will take some oversize off them.

Where Royal Mail have screwed up is the design of the new HCT which is smaller than the one I have so it’s unsuitable for the deliveries.

[ted_e_bear]

The HCT rounds in my office work really well it also helps that the manager won’t let any of us take the piss when it come to the oversize to.

Personally if I have the space for it then it goes in the trolly and sometimes I hang the bag off the back if I need extra capacity. There is even a few times on light days I’ve left no oversize at all and if I see the driver out there I will take some oversize off them.

Where Royal Mail have screwed up is the design of the new HCT which is smaller than the one I have so it’s unsuitable for the deliveries.

That's exactly as it should be, our four all take the piss, if that sounds unfair I think two of them don't even realise it, it's as though they all believe it's not their job to do larger items despite them being able to do so, all of the duties are close enough to the do to return within their duty times as they all finish early most days.

It's got to the point of paying overtime to get some of the hct duties parcels delivered, this is as usual caused by piss poor management.

[mwalker88]

This is an interesting topic I might have some unique insight into as an ex planner (left RM within the last year).

The business were adamant throughout the recent revision process thet they wanted to avoid lapsing/removing HCT duties to save hours where possible because they wanted to remove vans to save money (a typical van costs RM about £6500/year to run).

However the planning community and most managers view HCT's as inefficient because they have a limited capacity, you have to find someone to do the heavy and large, and they are unsuitable for certain terrain (large hills for example). In short, they are a pain in many instances, though in some areas that are covered by DPR routes they work quite well.

The main issues though are capacity and the travel time to get to the first delivery point.

There were some suggestions that offices should start designing some HCT duties to have very little indoor work, but instead do two "bursts" of delivery (3 hours of delivery, back to the office for meal break and refill the HCT, then back out on delivery for another 3 hours) but in reality this is wildly impractical and was suggested by someone who doesn't really understand the reality of deliveries.

Ultimately, they work very well in many areas, but they are also open for abuse by lazy postmen who use them to limit how much delivery work they can be given and incompetent managers let that happen instead of arranging for bag drops.

They will never be removed completely, and my experience was that units that are generally run fairly well use them effectively, and units that are run poorly hate them!

Go f*ck yourself Funiculaire. It's people like you that have broken Delivery, you earn a wage by making people's lives a misery.

[Nickvilla20]

This is an interesting topic I might have some unique insight into as an ex planner (left RM within the last year).

The business were adamant throughout the recent revision process thet they wanted to avoid lapsing/removing HCT duties to save hours where possible because they wanted to remove vans to save money (a typical van costs RM about £6500/year to run).

However the planning community and most managers view HCT's as inefficient because they have a limited capacity, you have to find someone to do the heavy and large, and they are unsuitable for certain terrain (large hills for example). In short, they are a pain in many instances, though in some areas that are covered by DPR routes they work quite well.

The main issues though are capacity and the travel time to get to the first delivery point.

There were some suggestions that offices should start designing some HCT duties to have very little indoor work, but instead do two "bursts" of delivery (3 hours of delivery, back to the office for meal break and refill the HCT, then back out on delivery for another 3 hours) but in reality this is wildly impractical and was suggested by someone who doesn't really understand the reality of deliveries.

Ultimately, they work very well in many areas, but they are also open for abuse by lazy postmen who use them to limit how much delivery work they can be given and incompetent managers let that happen instead of arranging for bag drops.

They will never be removed completely, and my experience was that units that are generally run fairly well use them effectively, and units that are run poorly hate them!

Go f*ck yourself Funiculaire. It's people like you that have broken Delivery, you earn a wage by making people's lives a misery.

I think that’s a bit unfair. Planners are told what to work with and have to plan within those constraints same as managers.

It’s the people at the top who have wrecked the job.

[clashcityrocker]

Go f*ck yourself Funiculaire. It's people like you that have broken Delivery, you earn a wage by making people's lives a misery.

And people like you that have ruined RMC as a place for grown ups.

[Basildon Bond]

This is an interesting topic I might have some unique insight into as an ex planner (left RM within the last year).

Do you know any that still work there? Do they know the problems we on delivery have? Can you point them at this site? Can all planners visit the DOs and work with people with local knowledge to implement fair revisions?

It seems like planners are kept well away from the people that have to walk the loops as if the two got together the planners may question what they are being asked to do.

[Funiculaire]

This is an interesting topic I might have some unique insight into as an ex planner (left RM within the last year).

The business were adamant throughout the recent revision process thet they wanted to avoid lapsing/removing HCT duties to save hours where possible because they wanted to remove vans to save money (a typical van costs RM about £6500/year to run).

However the planning community and most managers view HCT's as inefficient because they have a limited capacity, you have to find someone to do the heavy and large, and they are unsuitable for certain terrain (large hills for example). In short, they are a pain in many instances, though in some areas that are covered by DPR routes they work quite well.

The main issues though are capacity and the travel time to get to the first delivery point.

There were some suggestions that offices should start designing some HCT duties to have very little indoor work, but instead do two "bursts" of delivery (3 hours of delivery, back to the office for meal break and refill the HCT, then back out on delivery for another 3 hours) but in reality this is wildly impractical and was suggested by someone who doesn't really understand the reality of deliveries.

Ultimately, they work very well in many areas, but they are also open for abuse by lazy postmen who use them to limit how much delivery work they can be given and incompetent managers let that happen instead of arranging for bag drops.

They will never be removed completely, and my experience was that units that are generally run fairly well use them effectively, and units that are run poorly hate them!

Go f*ck yourself Funiculaire. It's people like you that have broken Delivery, you earn a wage by making people's lives a misery.

Yeah this is just a silly comment - the job of a planner is to help managers use their hours in the most effective way - they have no agency over the target hours/efficiency each office is given. And they will also be the first to say that the business suffers enormously from incompetent managers because they have to work with them all day!

Every planner would love to put hours into offices because most agree that what RM are trying to do in deliveries is flawed, but that isn't within their remit to do, they just have to try to make things work as best as they can.

[Funiculaire]

This is an interesting topic I might have some unique insight into as an ex planner (left RM within the last year).

Do you know any that still work there? Do they know the problems we on delivery have? Can you point them at this site? Can all planners visit the DOs and work with people with local knowledge to implement fair revisions?

It seems like planners are kept well away from the people that have to walk the loops as if the two got together the planners may question what they are being asked to do.

Bit of a tricky one this, because I mostly agree with sentiment here, but the reality is that to some degree the CWU try to retain this separation until agreements have been made locally between them and the COM about how the target hours are allocated, at which point they then want planners to sit down with local OPGs to plan routes.

Unfortunately revisions have time scales, let's say 12 weeks, and if the political juggling noted above takes 9 weeks then that leaves 3 weeks to plan every route in the office. Bearing in mind that in recent times planners have had 5 - 10 offices at a time, meaning they can't spend all their time in one unit. This is why planners try to encourage COMs/CWU reps to make decisions about how to allocate hours quickly and spend the bulk of the time designing routes instead of arguing with higher management for 2 months, getting nowhere, and then having 3 weeks to do a whole revision!

You also tend to find that a lot of OPGs aren't actually interested in helping either, usually because they don't held accountable by their colleagues if things aren't perfect.

[postslippete]

One of the things I noticed about revisions is that they seem rushed with many walks that have missing calls or whole streets with the numbers all jumbled up. There doesn't seem to be any foresight over the possibility of new builds being added after the planners have been so they end up being lumped on a frame somewhere for months and sorted out on the desk. The walk logs are not often up-dated regularly so anybody new to the frame would end up being lost. Obviously, there are some posties who prefer it that way but it really doesn't take much for management to re-visit all the walks and make sure they are as efficient as they can be.

[Mr Rush]

You also tend to find that a lot of OPGs aren't actually interested in helping either, usually because they don't held accountable by their colleagues if things aren't perfect.

I started out young and enthusiastic about getting it done right. My own experience co-operating with revision planning over the years to the point of getting paid serious OT to work on it outside office hours was that all the information provided seemed to be chucked in the bin in favour of a mangled mess being implemented. Generously assuming incompetence, perhaps they lost all the documents. Then with the last pseudo-revision the walk was made patently impossible to complete which finally pushed me into embracing apathy for the sake of my own mental health. Quite an emotional ride, so I don't blame all my colleagues who saved themselves the trouble of caring in the first place.

[SpacePhoenix]

One of the things I noticed about revisions is that they seem rushed with many walks that have missing calls or whole streets with the numbers all jumbled up. There doesn't seem to be any foresight over the possibility of new builds being added after the planners have been so they end up being lumped on a frame somewhere for months and sorted out on the desk. The walk logs are not often up-dated regularly so anybody new to the frame would end up being lost. Obviously, there are some posties who prefer it that way but it really doesn't take much for management to re-visit all the walks and make sure they are as efficient as they can be.

Do they update the Route Planner very often? If they don't then your sequencing must be wrong where the out of date data gets used when updating the sort plans

[postslippete]

Do they update the Route Planner very often? If they don't then your sequencing must be wrong where the out of date data gets used when updating the sort plans

No. Management appear to be too imbued with daily issues that the frames are forgotten about and left with the posties to sort out. The sequencing is often out of sync with the frames but the biggest issue is the fact that the walks are just unachievable for most posties.