STILLNESS EXPERIENCE AND REGIMES OF LOGISTICS
-> The phenomenon of stillness co-defines the reality experienced by drivers and the so-called pausing does not only constitute an intrinsic feature of this occupational group’s mobility, but also of long-haul road transport as a whole. During 456 hours of the journey with my driver, we covered only 5,600 kilometres. Moreover, we were on the move for 82 hours, which amounts to only 18% of the time that we spent in transit. The remaining 374 hours consisted of pausing: obligatory daily and weekly rest periods and unexpected, enforced breaks caused by some factors that we could not influence (lack of orders, badly organised loading processes, fuel economy policy, traffic jams – mainly on motorways, and the places of delivery closing earlier than expected). The longest and, at the same time, the most significant breaks took place in Hamburg and Witten in Germany, Bonnières-sur-Seine and Mulhouse in France, Machelen near Brussels and Houyet in Belgium, and Padborg in Denmark. In Hamburg we paused in one of harbour terminals O’Swaldkai for 24 hours; in Witten in a car park near route E41 for 17 hours; in Bonnières-sur-Seine by the walls of a carbon steelmaking plant for 66 hours; in Mulhouse on a car park near motorway A36, a part of the E-road system E60, for 57 hours; in Machelen in the industrial zone located between route E40 and an airport in Degier for 21 hours; in Houyet in a car park near route E411 for 16 hours; and in Padborg at a forwarding company base for 17 hours. In total, it was 218 hours, comprising 48% of the time I spent on the 19-day journey.
-> These were places where engaging in some clear bodily activities was not exactly possible. Additionally, the weather conditions forced us to stay in one place: sit or lie in the tractor unit cab. This means that those spaces, especially industrial zones, were absolutely not equipped staying there for more than a few hours. They were squares in the middle of production plants and factories, side paths and zone borders, where walking to other places was impossible. The same pertained to the zones themselves with bans on unrestricted movement within their area, or even outside it, because leaving the zones whenever one wanted was also prohibited. Sometimes it was just the opposite: the spaces were completely exposed and fenceless, which made everyday functioning difficult, for example, when it comes to physiological needs. This specific stillness and waiting are not only intrinsic to drivers’ mobility, but also to the rules that govern distribution and transport logistics.
-> The main role of logistics is to manage planning, implementing and controlling processes in order for the flow of raw materials, resources, ready-made products and appropriate information from the point of origin to the consumption point to be effective economically. Therefore, logistics encompasses a wide range of activities, from customer service, demand forecasting, information flow, inventory control, operations handling, order processing, repair and supply of parts, to locating manufacturing plants and warehouses, procurement processes, packaging, reverse logistics, waste management, transportation and storage operations. It is a technology that regulates the rhythm of activities that facilitate flow, which for the general public is almost universally associated with speed and acceleration, just as transport is. However, practice shows that associating flow of goods exclusively with constant transit is mistaken, since flow also involves elements of waiting and stillness.
-> The interpretation of the stillness of tractor unit drivers and, consequently, some kind of transport standstill, should begin with explaining two types of relationships drivers are involved in. They are based on subordination, supervision and regimes of logistics. The first type is the classical relationship between an employee and an employer (the forwarding or logistics company), while the second type has a contractual nature between two or more business entities: independent drivers who own tractor units and forwarding companies which use their services. In both cases we deal with relations between senders and carriers. Carriers are dependent on the organisation of industrial production, which directly generates the flow of given goods that need to be collected, delivered and distributed. Forwarding companies mainly manage commissioned transport services, known as transport for hire. In order to reduce costs, especially those generated by storage, senders reduce production of goods using a “just-in-time” strategy. The aim of this strategy is to ensure flow capacity, i.e. to provide optimum balance between the amount of produced goods, transport capacity of the vehicles, transport network capacity, handling capacity of warehouses, and the size of orders and inventory. The “just-in-time” rule is transferred onto forwarding companies and then to direct providers of transport services (see also Belzer 2010; Munduteguy 2014). While in small companies, which have permanent forwarders and recipients, transport organisation is integrated with production, in larger companies, which commission transport services, transport organisation is changeable, often unpredictable and designed to be carried out just in time. Here drivers’ autonomy is restricted not only by production processes of certain products, but also work organisation patterns of both the forwarders and later the recipients, who in the case of the journeyI took part in usually turned out to be processors of the goods that my driver delivered. Summarising, the following factors influence drivers’ mobility: opening and closing times of loading and unloading sites, quality and efficiency of administrative activities, availability of employees responsible for goods management: their loading, unloading and securing, and even the employees’ approach towards drivers of a given nationality. The regime of logistics which governs everyday lives of drivers consists of continuous optimisation of the use of means of transport. This optimisation is linked to the reduction of empty runs and, due to the mentioned dependence of forwarding companies on industrial production processes, it is also linked to rationalisation and an ongoing establishment of routes coupled with consolidation of orders. In the situations that I experienced, these processes could last even up to a few days since the production was slowed down for the holiday period.
-> When we take into consideration stillness, slowdown and stagnation, as opposed to the speed of flow that drives the world capital, the question why those elements are a part of logistics seems to be particularly interesting. The answer can be found in the book Stillness in a Mobile World (2010) edited by David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, where the authors deconstruct the seemingly simple dichotomy between stillness or stagnation, which generate disorder, and chaos and flow, which generates capital accumulation and drives economies. The forwarding business is first and foremost a complex movement of bodies, goods and machines taking place on a given territory. The main role of logistics is to manage movement of people and goods in order to make communication, transport and economics effective. Therefore, logistics becomes the key to understanding the appearing social configurations (interactions, relations, meanings, values) and the technologies which trigger or even enforce them. At the level of work and flow management, stillness contrasts with the main idea behind transport, which is supposed to consist of moving goods from their production site to their post-production sites and finally to consumers (Neilson, Rossiter 2010: 51-67).
-> The framework of logistics is based on three independent but interacting systems. The first is the physical system of goods transport, which is organised in such a way as to satisfy the dynamically changing mobility infrastructure; the second is a system based on transactions and information flow, which make it possible to deliver and distribute goods; finally, the third is a supervision system, which enforces some rules of legally standardised behaviour and activities. The last system defines the rights and obligations of transport providers (Willis, Ortiz 2004). Control is exercised on a few levels: international and federal law, rules enforced by company owners and the company’s representatives (agents), the police and customs supervision, monitoring of loading and unloading sites, and on a strictly technological level (GPS devices, probes and tachographs). Consequently, logistic systems accelerate or slow down transport times by creating hierarchical spaces of mobility where transport interpreted as a progressive, linear movement between A and B is replaced by different forms of flow involving various detours, pauses and waiting (Fuller 2007: 1-5). The components of these spaces of mobility are almost exclusively Augéan non-places: factories, harbours, roads, and car parks. They constitute specific nodes of the logistic system that serve as connection points between movement and stillness. This is where coordination and management of the stored products, coupled with speedy transport, take place. They reflect last minute deliveries in time most accurately. However, this regime undoubtedly does not only generate stillness, i.e. the tension between exercising one’s freedom and being controlled. According to David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, the stillness ingrained in distribution and transport logistics can be interpreted as regeneration of capital (Bissell, Fuller 2010: 1-18).
-> Where the system of goods flow management is concerned, stillness and the waiting which it entails, cannot be interpreted as immobility. In spite of the contrasting experiences that I gained when I was taking part in the transit, I opine that from the perspective of how transit is performed, stillness and stagnation are not only about slowing down the flow and opposing speed and mobility. They are also a starting point of something that lasts, or is supposed to happen, and the necessity to maintain smooth flow and flexibility of transit. At the emotional and psychophysical level, the fieldwork I carried out should have made me interpret the nature of tractor unit drivers’ mobility as pausing in the Augéan non-places, whose features generate exclusively the feeling of deprivation, dispersion and endless boredom. Pausing and waiting are inscribed in transit and movement. The community of long-haul truck drivers is not the only one that has to wait within the mobility infrastructure. The lack of clear activity is also characteristic of all the spaces which belong to movement and flow infrastructure. Stillness is a form of anticipation and contract between those waiting and pausing and the events that are supposed to take place (see also Cresswell 2012: 645-653). It is a kind of productive means to reach something that has its own purpose. The promise that this purpose one is waiting for will eventually be fulfilled defines stillness and stagnation (Bissell 2007: 277-298).
-> In my studies, it was possible to notice this phenomenon owing to an intensive and long-term presence in spaces identified as non-places, even though it often led to sensory deprivation. These non-places, motorways, car parks, and industrial zones, are in this case a kind of waiting landscapes, governed by the rules of law, economic policies and regimes of logistics. Pausing of both carriers and goods transit is not coincidental and belongs to calculated and designed logistic strategies. Drivers cannot predict how long they will be waiting for instructions. They do not take part in the processes of order consolidation and manipulation of the pace of industrial production, so they experience even more acutely the just-in-time strategy, which is supposed to combine flexibility and smooth flow, on the one hand, and precise flow where intervals are inevitable and necessary, on the other.
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References:
Belzer, Michael H. 2010. Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bissell David. 2007. Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities. ”Mobility” 2 (2): 277-298.
Bissell, David and Gillian Fuller (eds.) 2010. Stillness in a Mobile World. London-New York: Routledge.
Creswell, Tim. 2012. Mobilities II: Still. ”Progress in Human Geography” 36(5): 645–653.
Fuller, Gillian. 2007. The Queue Project: Informationalising Bodies and Bits. ”Semiotic Review of Books 16.3” 1-5, http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/ (accessed 02.05.2021).
Munduteguy, Christophe. 2014. Truck Drivers: Labor Issues, in: Mark Garett (ed.) Encyclopedia of Transportation. Los Angeles: Sage, pp.3.
Neilson, Brett and Ned Rossiter. 2010. Still Waiting, Still Moving: On Labour, Logistics and Maritime Industries, in: Bissell David, Gillian Fuller (eds.) 2010. Stillness in a Mobile World, London-New York: Routledge, pp. 51-67.
from: Stanisz, Agata. 2015. Regimes of logistics, pauses in the flow, stillness in (near) industrial non-places and mobility infrastructure, “Studia Humanistyczne AGH” 14(4): pp. 73-86.
-> The phenomenon of stillness co-defines the reality experienced by drivers and the so-called pausing does not only constitute an intrinsic feature of this occupational group’s mobility, but also of long-haul road transport as a whole. During 456 hours of the journey with my driver, we covered only 5,600 kilometres. Moreover, we were on the move for 82 hours, which amounts to only 18% of the time that we spent in transit. The remaining 374 hours consisted of pausing: obligatory daily and weekly rest periods and unexpected, enforced breaks caused by some factors that we could not influence (lack of orders, badly organised loading processes, fuel economy policy, traffic jams – mainly on motorways, and the places of delivery closing earlier than expected). The longest and, at the same time, the most significant breaks took place in Hamburg and Witten in Germany, Bonnières-sur-Seine and Mulhouse in France, Machelen near Brussels and Houyet in Belgium, and Padborg in Denmark. In Hamburg we paused in one of harbour terminals O’Swaldkai for 24 hours; in Witten in a car park near route E41 for 17 hours; in Bonnières-sur-Seine by the walls of a carbon steelmaking plant for 66 hours; in Mulhouse on a car park near motorway A36, a part of the E-road system E60, for 57 hours; in Machelen in the industrial zone located between route E40 and an airport in Degier for 21 hours; in Houyet in a car park near route E411 for 16 hours; and in Padborg at a forwarding company base for 17 hours. In total, it was 218 hours, comprising 48% of the time I spent on the 19-day journey.
-> These were places where engaging in some clear bodily activities was not exactly possible. Additionally, the weather conditions forced us to stay in one place: sit or lie in the tractor unit cab. This means that those spaces, especially industrial zones, were absolutely not equipped staying there for more than a few hours. They were squares in the middle of production plants and factories, side paths and zone borders, where walking to other places was impossible. The same pertained to the zones themselves with bans on unrestricted movement within their area, or even outside it, because leaving the zones whenever one wanted was also prohibited. Sometimes it was just the opposite: the spaces were completely exposed and fenceless, which made everyday functioning difficult, for example, when it comes to physiological needs. This specific stillness and waiting are not only intrinsic to drivers’ mobility, but also to the rules that govern distribution and transport logistics.
-> The main role of logistics is to manage planning, implementing and controlling processes in order for the flow of raw materials, resources, ready-made products and appropriate information from the point of origin to the consumption point to be effective economically. Therefore, logistics encompasses a wide range of activities, from customer service, demand forecasting, information flow, inventory control, operations handling, order processing, repair and supply of parts, to locating manufacturing plants and warehouses, procurement processes, packaging, reverse logistics, waste management, transportation and storage operations. It is a technology that regulates the rhythm of activities that facilitate flow, which for the general public is almost universally associated with speed and acceleration, just as transport is. However, practice shows that associating flow of goods exclusively with constant transit is mistaken, since flow also involves elements of waiting and stillness.
-> The interpretation of the stillness of tractor unit drivers and, consequently, some kind of transport standstill, should begin with explaining two types of relationships drivers are involved in. They are based on subordination, supervision and regimes of logistics. The first type is the classical relationship between an employee and an employer (the forwarding or logistics company), while the second type has a contractual nature between two or more business entities: independent drivers who own tractor units and forwarding companies which use their services. In both cases we deal with relations between senders and carriers. Carriers are dependent on the organisation of industrial production, which directly generates the flow of given goods that need to be collected, delivered and distributed. Forwarding companies mainly manage commissioned transport services, known as transport for hire. In order to reduce costs, especially those generated by storage, senders reduce production of goods using a “just-in-time” strategy. The aim of this strategy is to ensure flow capacity, i.e. to provide optimum balance between the amount of produced goods, transport capacity of the vehicles, transport network capacity, handling capacity of warehouses, and the size of orders and inventory. The “just-in-time” rule is transferred onto forwarding companies and then to direct providers of transport services (see also Belzer 2010; Munduteguy 2014). While in small companies, which have permanent forwarders and recipients, transport organisation is integrated with production, in larger companies, which commission transport services, transport organisation is changeable, often unpredictable and designed to be carried out just in time. Here drivers’ autonomy is restricted not only by production processes of certain products, but also work organisation patterns of both the forwarders and later the recipients, who in the case of the journeyI took part in usually turned out to be processors of the goods that my driver delivered. Summarising, the following factors influence drivers’ mobility: opening and closing times of loading and unloading sites, quality and efficiency of administrative activities, availability of employees responsible for goods management: their loading, unloading and securing, and even the employees’ approach towards drivers of a given nationality. The regime of logistics which governs everyday lives of drivers consists of continuous optimisation of the use of means of transport. This optimisation is linked to the reduction of empty runs and, due to the mentioned dependence of forwarding companies on industrial production processes, it is also linked to rationalisation and an ongoing establishment of routes coupled with consolidation of orders. In the situations that I experienced, these processes could last even up to a few days since the production was slowed down for the holiday period.
-> When we take into consideration stillness, slowdown and stagnation, as opposed to the speed of flow that drives the world capital, the question why those elements are a part of logistics seems to be particularly interesting. The answer can be found in the book Stillness in a Mobile World (2010) edited by David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, where the authors deconstruct the seemingly simple dichotomy between stillness or stagnation, which generate disorder, and chaos and flow, which generates capital accumulation and drives economies. The forwarding business is first and foremost a complex movement of bodies, goods and machines taking place on a given territory. The main role of logistics is to manage movement of people and goods in order to make communication, transport and economics effective. Therefore, logistics becomes the key to understanding the appearing social configurations (interactions, relations, meanings, values) and the technologies which trigger or even enforce them. At the level of work and flow management, stillness contrasts with the main idea behind transport, which is supposed to consist of moving goods from their production site to their post-production sites and finally to consumers (Neilson, Rossiter 2010: 51-67).
-> The framework of logistics is based on three independent but interacting systems. The first is the physical system of goods transport, which is organised in such a way as to satisfy the dynamically changing mobility infrastructure; the second is a system based on transactions and information flow, which make it possible to deliver and distribute goods; finally, the third is a supervision system, which enforces some rules of legally standardised behaviour and activities. The last system defines the rights and obligations of transport providers (Willis, Ortiz 2004). Control is exercised on a few levels: international and federal law, rules enforced by company owners and the company’s representatives (agents), the police and customs supervision, monitoring of loading and unloading sites, and on a strictly technological level (GPS devices, probes and tachographs). Consequently, logistic systems accelerate or slow down transport times by creating hierarchical spaces of mobility where transport interpreted as a progressive, linear movement between A and B is replaced by different forms of flow involving various detours, pauses and waiting (Fuller 2007: 1-5). The components of these spaces of mobility are almost exclusively Augéan non-places: factories, harbours, roads, and car parks. They constitute specific nodes of the logistic system that serve as connection points between movement and stillness. This is where coordination and management of the stored products, coupled with speedy transport, take place. They reflect last minute deliveries in time most accurately. However, this regime undoubtedly does not only generate stillness, i.e. the tension between exercising one’s freedom and being controlled. According to David Bissell and Gillian Fuller, the stillness ingrained in distribution and transport logistics can be interpreted as regeneration of capital (Bissell, Fuller 2010: 1-18).
-> Where the system of goods flow management is concerned, stillness and the waiting which it entails, cannot be interpreted as immobility. In spite of the contrasting experiences that I gained when I was taking part in the transit, I opine that from the perspective of how transit is performed, stillness and stagnation are not only about slowing down the flow and opposing speed and mobility. They are also a starting point of something that lasts, or is supposed to happen, and the necessity to maintain smooth flow and flexibility of transit. At the emotional and psychophysical level, the fieldwork I carried out should have made me interpret the nature of tractor unit drivers’ mobility as pausing in the Augéan non-places, whose features generate exclusively the feeling of deprivation, dispersion and endless boredom. Pausing and waiting are inscribed in transit and movement. The community of long-haul truck drivers is not the only one that has to wait within the mobility infrastructure. The lack of clear activity is also characteristic of all the spaces which belong to movement and flow infrastructure. Stillness is a form of anticipation and contract between those waiting and pausing and the events that are supposed to take place (see also Cresswell 2012: 645-653). It is a kind of productive means to reach something that has its own purpose. The promise that this purpose one is waiting for will eventually be fulfilled defines stillness and stagnation (Bissell 2007: 277-298).
-> In my studies, it was possible to notice this phenomenon owing to an intensive and long-term presence in spaces identified as non-places, even though it often led to sensory deprivation. These non-places, motorways, car parks, and industrial zones, are in this case a kind of waiting landscapes, governed by the rules of law, economic policies and regimes of logistics. Pausing of both carriers and goods transit is not coincidental and belongs to calculated and designed logistic strategies. Drivers cannot predict how long they will be waiting for instructions. They do not take part in the processes of order consolidation and manipulation of the pace of industrial production, so they experience even more acutely the just-in-time strategy, which is supposed to combine flexibility and smooth flow, on the one hand, and precise flow where intervals are inevitable and necessary, on the other.
Paragraph. Kliknij tutaj, aby edytować.
References:
Belzer, Michael H. 2010. Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bissell David. 2007. Animating Suspension: Waiting for Mobilities. ”Mobility” 2 (2): 277-298.
Bissell, David and Gillian Fuller (eds.) 2010. Stillness in a Mobile World. London-New York: Routledge.
Creswell, Tim. 2012. Mobilities II: Still. ”Progress in Human Geography” 36(5): 645–653.
Fuller, Gillian. 2007. The Queue Project: Informationalising Bodies and Bits. ”Semiotic Review of Books 16.3” 1-5, http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/ (accessed 02.05.2021).
Munduteguy, Christophe. 2014. Truck Drivers: Labor Issues, in: Mark Garett (ed.) Encyclopedia of Transportation. Los Angeles: Sage, pp.3.
Neilson, Brett and Ned Rossiter. 2010. Still Waiting, Still Moving: On Labour, Logistics and Maritime Industries, in: Bissell David, Gillian Fuller (eds.) 2010. Stillness in a Mobile World, London-New York: Routledge, pp. 51-67.
from: Stanisz, Agata. 2015. Regimes of logistics, pauses in the flow, stillness in (near) industrial non-places and mobility infrastructure, “Studia Humanistyczne AGH” 14(4): pp. 73-86.
regimes_of_logistics.pdf |