Thinking of switching vendor load-in to 15-minute slots via Calendly at Dock 2 for Friday’s expo (7:00–9:30 a.m.) to cut idle trucks and overtime. Has anyone seen smoother turnarounds with tight windows, and how did you handle no-shows without blowing the timeline?
At Dock 2, add 5‑minute buffers and one standby slot; ‘no-shows’ slide there, with Calendly auto-text reminders.
@daniel10’s buffer idea is solid; what really helped us was a text-to-claim step — vendors get a 10‑min SMS before their 15‑min slot and must reply ARRIVED, or the slot auto‑releases and pings the waitlist… We also grab plate numbers in Calendly so dock staff can wave in the right truck fast; do you have a marshal to run the queue?
We made 15‑minute slots work by pairing them with a small staging loop and a scan‑to‑start QR on the Calendly confirmation — think boarding groups for trucks. The QR gets scanned when the trailer is at the dock, which starts the 15‑min clock; if there’s no scan by +3 minutes, the slot auto‑releases and the “no‑show” drops to the end of the hour. Only caveat: tag heavy unloads for a double slot so one slow rig doesn’t ripple the whole grid — do you have a nearby lot to stage early arrivals?
We cut idle time by taking a $50 refundable hold on each booking; it releases at check-in, and if someone ghosts we flip the spot to standby without haggling. > for a double slot so one slow rig doesn’t ripple the whole grid — do you have a nearby lot to stage We let heavies request a double by ticking “oversize” in the form, but only grant it if they confirm a staging bay two blocks out — do you have that option?
We had smoother turns by using a geofenced check-in (Calendly + Zapier): when a driver’s phone enters a 300 m radius it flags them ‘on deck’, and if they’re not at Dock 2 within 4 minutes we pull the next truck and push them to the next cycle. Are you batching arrivals by booth zone to cut cross-floor carting? That combo kept no-shows from freezing the timeline and trimmed aisle congestion — like a deli counter for trucks.