Staging orders
Staging wholesale orders for drivers is a great way learn your way around the back of your store. It also helps you determine the most efficient way to pull orders or direct others to do so. Much like your commercial manager directing drivers to groups of stops to be most efficient with your resources, knowing where items are will help you grab a batch of related tickets to pull to save you steps around your store.
Further, you’ll get familiar with where parts live within your store, and likely spots to look for a part that’s “hiding.” Small-box ignition and electrical items have a vastly different storage scheme within most parts stores than bagged transmission lines, exhaust pipes, or lug nuts.
And finally, pulling orders effectively ensures you can keep drivers where they belong: on the road. A ticket that hasn’t been pulled is often a ticking clock for a technician who’s working flat-rate. By keeping orders pulled and staged for drivers, they can immediately “turn and burn,” meaning the delivery vehicle is moving, instead of waiting on nearby orders to be pulled and reducing “return to the store” radio calls for nearby orders that weren’t pulled and discovered after a driver has left.
Making efficient use of resources like that is exactly what’s considered when positions on the commercial counter open up. And let’s not forget that the people you helped load trucks with heavy chemicals and brake rotors will be appreciative and also have a good example of what it is to work as a team, not as a group of soloists—not a bad jumping off point if you wind up managing those same people, is it?
If you want to understand how your store operates, help your teammates move efficiently, help your customers, and help yourself, you should spend time on your feet, not your rear end!