A Career Talk hosted by Belmar Integrated Logistics ..read more

WAOC is mobile today and at one of my favorite festivals!  We’re hanging out at the Taste of Oak Cliff.  It’s a great community event, everyone comes together, store fronts, restaurateur’s and yes, a couple of sourcing and staffing agencies and one training center. So I wanted to take this opportunity while out and about to discuss jobs and careers and like I mentioned try and get a few questions answered as well.  Being live its going to be a little noisy today so please bear with me!  Hold up, let me see if I can grab this gentleman here. Kevin So I’m asked every month if ..read more

So, during every PIT or powered industrial truck training class your instructor will mention, and I hope he or she will review, the Operators Manual with us.  This week, I had an individual ask why this was important, he stated that nobody reads those manuals. I understand the statement.  Did you know that when we purchase a new vehicle or car, we, as a new owner are supposed to read the owner’s manual?  Ever seen how many warning stickers that are in the vehicle, come on, you’ve seen them.  Maybe up on the passenger visor?  I had one gentleman comment that all he look ..read more

Forklift and Palletjack batteries.  Has your facility experienced any issues this week?  Our supplier called us this week to schedule our quarterly P.M. on our equipment and almost immediately I started hearing about batteries.  A palletjack battery in one state started smoking and another actually produced flames.  At one facility an unloader forgot to replace a guard plate, well, he said it already wasn’t there, which just meant that he failed to pre-trip his equipment, anyway he took off, made a turn and the battery slid out on the ..read more

Hey Team WAOC, everyone wrapping up the summer, getting the little ones back to school and trying to settle back into our routines?  July was a whipping for me professionally. Nothing really got out of hand, I just got overloaded.  I had a few 10 day classes come up, which was great, I really enjoy instructing those Logistics classes.  I filled in or covered a couple of other positions for the company as well, again, nothing major, just my work week was expanded by several hours! Today I thought we’d talk about our work/life balance, or is that even a thing!  I’ve heard tho ..read more

Here we are, it’s that time again.  I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career!  I’ve gotten behind on questions that’s been sent in again so let’s see if we can get a few of those answered or brought up for discussion today. A gentleman named Kevin has been looking into or thinking about becoming a driver and maybe launching a career in transportation.  He asked what was meant by doubles and triples in transportation.  He states that being from the warehouse he’s heard of double jacks and triple jacks but certainly they don’t mean 2 and three trailers?  Well ..read more

Hi all. I was speaking with a V.P. last week and he brought up micro goals.  I got to thinking, I talk a lot about goals and planning, but isn’t our normal progression within the industry just that, a bunch of micro goals.  From a unloader or G/L position, to being trained on the electric rider pallet jack as a runner, and on to maybe a receiver, or putaway or replenishment forklift driver and then to maybe a position in management.  Aren’t each of those steps really just micro goals? Now if you look for definitions for micro goals about all you’ll find is something like small g ..read more

Hey everyone, Marty T Hawkins here, and I want to thank you for checking in with Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  We all, or most of the time, we know what our job is.  We know the task, the function, and we may even think we know what expectations our boss has for us.  Or do we know any of that?  And who’s responsibility is it to know that we know those things?   Well, today I thought we’d talk through a few of those things and why, I believe, we as employees need to know those things and be responsible to learn them, and why us as employers should be makin ..read more

Another month is wrapping up folks!  We appreciate you stopping in with us again today!  I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  We’ve had several questions lately about the front line management positions so I thought we’d talk about what those positions are and maybe I can share a few of the pros and cons of them with you.  At least maybe answer a few of those questions! So last week I helped put together a Lumper or unloader training program.  As we’ve learned, in a distribution facility everything starts there, with the inbound freight so what better ..read more

There are so many career opportunities in our industry, I learn about new task and positions within the logistics field every week!  Could you imagine planning and controlling the routes of container ships as an example? Today’s container ships may be something like 1200 ft long, with a draft of something like 50 foot and carrying as many as 14000 TEU. A TEU means Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, which is a 20ft container, or a container that is 20ft long by 8ft wide and 8ft 6in high.  A 40ft container would be 2 TEU’s and a 45ft container would be 2.25 TEU’s. Can you imagine seeing 8k c ..read more