Eighteen months ago we moved 60% of our container moves at the Waalhaven yard to the night shift. Truck wait times fell from 74 to 19 minutes. Injuries went down, not up.
But the thing nobody warned us about was sleep. These are the nine lessons I wish I had read before we signed the roster, including the one that cost us two of our best crane operators.
If you run a yard, a depot, or any 24-hour floor, I would love to hear what worked for you. #logistics #shiftwork #operations
Nine lessons from moving our yard to nights
Truck wait time, minutes
Roster the sleep, not the shift
“The crane cab is the loneliest room in the port at 3 a.m. Put a radio channel in it that is just for talking.”
Light the yard like a kitchen, not a stadium
Ask the operators first. Then the spreadsheet.
- Elif DemirDepot Manager, Kestrow Logistics · 2dLesson 04 is real. We added a talk-only channel on night shift last winter and the number of near-miss reports went up, which is exactly what you want.