first off i must say good gawd! at the loss of revenue w/o tracking those things. second let me tell you my extensive background w/ stuff like this...for several yrs i was a buyer in private gardens centers that received plant material on large rolling racks then i went to lowe's and handled 3 large stores where we also received plants on racks. in those situations i was not requirred to do anything other than make sure those racks did not get stolen. the shipping companies tracked them, this was almost 15 yrs ago...some companies were better than other's at this, some just by the shear volumne of shipments kept up w/ their racks. for instance costa color often had more than 20 racks at any given store but also had atleast 10 trucks in the same area and could direct an empty to a store to p/u.

now i run shipping for a large landscape growing company w/ 3 locations that ships from NC to TX. we do not at the moment use racks but are thinking of adding that option to our big box type places. we track our semi's via WebTech wireless and if & when we add rolling racks would add a tracking device to each rack. these racks are several hundred $$ a piece and our trucks would need to be retro-fitted to the tune of close to $10K so it's in our best interest to keep track of the things. you also need to have enough avail and not waiting on returning racks inorder to load a truck. we run an extremely tight shipping schedule w/ immediate truck turn around and can not afford to have to wait even 4 hrs for a backup.

aside from a tracking program a crude way would be our dispatch schedule. for each day i have to fill out a dispatch schedule, an excel spreadsheet, for every truck (1 column), listing what trailer #, driver, and each order (w/ pertaining info) in order of drop schedule. each day has a new page and there is one schedule per month. that might work, until you find a more formal program. ~ liz

Wow, you are a great employee! I cannot answer your question about a computer program, but it might help to know how many carts you are talking about--1,000 or 10,000?

Please don't laugh--I keep track of 2 carts on my job, carts that people borrow from my room. The carts are labeled with the room where they belong, and they always seem to come back (knock wood). Are your carts labeled with the company name? Should they be assigned to drivers who would take ultimate responsibility for them?

Just some thoughts. Have a good day, Moonie.

~liz - thank you! You gave me enough info to ask some questions.

First, definitely the "crude" system would be the way we would go. And there's a good chance that some of our carts ended up at your Lowe's stores. In fact, I work for a plant farm. It's been a big problem at the end of spring and fall season trying to figure out where the carts are. Generally, they send out drivers several times a year with the sole intent of rounding up carts, going to each and every store. The drivers don't always bring back carts as requested. Many times they have to break the carts down (our smaller carts) in order to have room and will often not bother checking places and will also leave carts that could have been unloaded and returned. Also, some stores will sometimes actually take the carts inside for their own personal use.

My boss recently went to a ballgame 200 miles away and just happened to stop by one of the stores that was in the process of moving to a new location. He found several of our carts out by the DUMPSTERS. This was a store that was already checked. lol

Now for the questions using the spreadsheet. Was this solely your responsibility? Did you have to supervise the loading of each and every truck? And the unloading of the return carts? Do you have any tips or tricks that you found made the job easier?

We are a very laid back company, nobody does things the way they should be. lol
One of the problems I can imagine would be the guys unloading carts without logging what was taken off the trailers. Any advice on that? I thought about a dry erase board, just in case, because I have the responsibility of 2 greenhouses on top of this and can't be on the loading dock every minute.

socks - I'm not so much a great employee but a better wife. DH is one of the drivers for this company and he's always aggravated over the cart situation. He'll end up having to break down carts that other drivers should have already picked up. This has been an ongoing problem for him for years now. If I were to take on this job, not only could I ease that for him but I could see if he -really- does his job as he should. ~snicker~

Some of the older carts are numbered, none of the newer carts are. I'm really not sure how many we have, but in the spring we got 500 new ones, costing several hundred $$$ a piece. My guess would be over a 1000. Again, some of the old ones have name plates, the new ones don't. I don't think we could assign specific numbered carts to certain drivers. That would seem too involved with a language barrier with those that actually fill the orders. Not to mention finding the room to actually try to keep the carts in some numerical order.

I'm surprised your carts always manage to make it back. I use carts in my GH's with trash cans, rakes, brooms, shovels and personal things, and if I turn my back, the guys will drag my stuff off and take my carts. lol

wow well we must exchange emails, i think we could help each other out alot! we do not yet use those racks and honestly our concern is what can happen to them on customer sites etc...this is actually one of the hurdles to going into major clients and we are not sure we want to give into this. on a smaller scale i track my 48' trailers, semi's, ford 550's, 33' trailer s and few box trucks w/ my spreadsheet thou. i will email you one.

i am at work right now but my email is: ehld at CFL.RR.Com i am in the orlando/apopka area. ~ liz

liz ~ I would love a sample spreadsheet to look over. Thank you.

Isn't apopka a big produce place? Seems like DH loaded out of there alot back in the days when he was hauling produce.