There are certain things in life that cause me massive amounts of anxiety; staying in hotel rooms, grocery shopping, driving and riding in cars, and math. Today we will talk about math – how to determine the “skid space” that LTL carriers use in the rating process.
Calculating Skid Space is Math and I Hate Math
I hate math. I don’t know what percentage of you just nodded emphatically, stood up on your desk chair, raised your arms up over your head, and screamed, “Me too!” and then looked at the guy sitting next to you and whispered, “It’s like she’s looking into my soul, man!” because figuring that out would have involved math. My guess is that I am reaching a massive amount of souls.
Remember in elementary school when the teacher would hand out what looked to be a super awesome color by number paper and your first thought was, “Oh, I am so gonna rock this!” only to find that it was, in fact, a “color by addition” paper? Then, adding to the abject humiliation of the whole exercise, the sweet little duck swimming in a pond that was to be revealed with your studious answers ended up looking like a Picasso painting. Ok, maybe that was just me, but my point is that some people are good at math and some are not. I am a not.
I have a photo copied picture taped to the partition of my cube of a distressed looking zebra with all of its stripes pooled around its ankles with the caption, “I think it’s stress. No, it’s trucking”. Although the zebra is not to scale and I don’t truly believe that stripes can abandon its owner and just fall off, this is pretty dead on accurate. The zebra, you see, is a metaphor for everyone in the supply chain field at some point – customer, shipper, consignee, sales rep, ops person, carrier, and the cute guy in customer service. I bring the zebra into this because I am the zebra every time I have to set my mind free and calculate skid space beyond standard skid size. Add in drums, boxes, or totes of varying shapes and sizes and I am rendered catatonic.
Problem Solving the LTL Way
The chick that sits next to me and the guy across the room that used to be in LTL are wicked awesome at figuring this stuff out, but they’re not the one blogging. I am. So, let’s figure out this goat rodeo that is skid space calculation together.
Number 1 – Relax. Do some chair Yoga, breathe into a bag, cry, whatever it is that you do to release stress, do it. Pull yourself together. Your customer depends on it.
Number 2 – Write out the problem. Yes, I just told you to turn this into a story problem. No, I’m not a sell out just like Metallica after they cut their hair and went main stream or KISS after they shed their makeup. I’m not and neither are they. We’re all just trying to appeal to a broader audience. For some, writing it out can be the only way to organize your thoughts and bring the train around.
Example: You need to know that one standard skid space is 48x48x96 (length by width by height). You also assume that the driver will make the largest floor dimension the length.
You have two skids. Your skids are 52x36x42 and they are stackable. First, you will multiply 52 x 2 because there are two skids and they are both 52 inches long. The total length is 104. Next, you will divide 104 by 48 (48 is the length of a standard skid) and you will get 2.16 skid spaces. Because these are stackable, you will then divide by 2, which will give you 1.08 skid spaces. As with this answer, not all answers will be whole numbers. The rule of thumb is that anything over 3/10 will be rounded UP to the nearest skid space. In this case, the .08 is not over 3/10, so you can round down. Your answer is one skid space. If the skids had been non-stackable, you would have stopped at 2.16. Again, the .16 was not larger than 3/10 so you would round down. Your answer would have been 2 skid spots.
Number 3 – Draw out the problem. This is for you visual people who think that any movie in 2-D is a total waste of time. If you want to draw out your freight in 3-D like in junior high industrial arts class, knock yourself out.
Number 4 – Have a group think. It is not uncommon for my little slice of LTL heaven to have a forum on skid space calculation. I have even considered crowd sourcing for the answer to an LTL math problem and we are certainly not above calling the guy across the room that used to be in LTL for help. The only stupid question is the one that doesn’t get asked…and this will cost your customer money. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby! Fall on your sword and ask for help.
Finding the Answer and Keeping My Stripes
If you’re tired of stressing over your own freight, skids, and trucking needs, call us and let us worry about it for you. If you’d like more math problems or would like to discuss our mutual dislike for math, then email me. Until then you may relish in the idea that the information you just gleaned may be a Jeopardy answer someday and you can say, to the amazement of your friends and family, that you learned it from a zebra.
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About Kate Gardner