We’re averaging 26 hours dwell across about 210 trailers and I’m trying to get that under 18 without adding another yard truck. I’ve started batching pulls by door group on the:30 and:00 and locking swing shift to drop-zone A, but the 5–7 pm wave still chokes the gate. Anyone dial in a schedule or staging map that moves the needle?
And flip 4:30–7:00 to gate-metering — release 3–4 trailers every 8–10 minutes and stage a six‑spot “hot row” within about 200 ft of the gate so the “5–7 pm wave still chokes the gate” turns into a carwash, not a firehose. Can you carve that row out of drop‑zone A without killing dock turns?
Offset your batching to a ‘:10/:40’ pull during 4:30–6:30 so it misses badge swipes and dock shift swaps; that cut our 5–7 gate queue by about half and brought dwell from about 22 to 17 without another mule. Are your breaks landing on the:00/:30?
Piggybacking @robinson73, set a 60–90 min door‑change freeze after 3:30 and enforce “no doc, no pull” — treat docs like boarding passes — then from 4:20 pre‑stage only doc‑ready due‑outs into an 8‑slot flex row about 150 ft from the gate to keep 5–7 moving. If docs aren’t the choke, flip the freeze to inbound door assigns instead. Can you hold a 60‑min freeze without ops melting down?
We cut dwell from 23 to 17 by running a 4:15–4:35 purge ahead of the “5–7 pm wave”: pre‑pull only doc‑ready trailers slated to turn in that window, stage them nose‑out in Drop‑Zone A, and freeze all other moves until 6:30. It’s counterintuitive, but the 75–90 minutes of runway keeps the gate stable even with your:30/:00 batching, and you can do it with one yard truck. If you’ve got room to stripe 6–8 purge slots, try it for two days and tune the count after day one.
We shaved to 17 by adding an age-triggered sweep: “>18h = move” twice per shift; anything over 18h gets relocated to a priority row by doors 9–12, and those doors run “priority only” until that row’s empty — no extra truck. @nate_king87’s doc‑ready focus pairs well; do you have a door bank you can reserve 30–45 min for that push?
Try offsetting your batches only during the crunch: 4:30–6:30 run pulls on:15/:45 and flip Drop‑Zone A to “turn‑only”; anything not slated to depart by 7 bypasses A. Pair it with a 2–3 stall hold at the gate so the guard meters arrivals to the:15/:45 clock — it leveled our 5–7 choke without another yard truck. @nate_king87’s purge window helps, but the offset alone moved us from about 26 to about 19.
Run a 5:10–5:40 inbound ‘freeze’ and text carriers; cleared our gate. Can you hold inbounds 30 minutes?