Picture Proof of Delivery (PPOD) With Dave + Amy Byers
This week on Industry Insights with Route Consultant we’re unpacking the rollout of Picture Proof of Delivery (PPOD) in the FedEx space with Dave + Amy Byers — exploring its origins, key metrics, and operational challenges. Learn how PPOD is reshaping delivery standards across the industry, and gain practical strategies for maintaining efficiency and exceptional customer service as this new process takes hold.
About Dave + Amy Byers
Dave Byers, President of Slicker Trucking, Inc., started as a FedEx package handler before launching his own route in 2007, growing it into an award-winning operation with a hands-on leadership style. His wife, Amy Byers, joined as COO in 2017, bringing expertise in marketing, compliance, and finance to scale their family-owned business. Together, they run multiple FedEx P&D and linehaul operations, two fleet repair shops, and businesses like Ohio Valley Pizza Company™ and Hokulia Shave Ice™, all while staying rooted in their core values of Honesty, Integrity, and Commitment to People.
-
Josh Gregory: [00:00:00] Welcome to Industry Insights with Route Consultant, your front row seat to the fast moving world of logistics and beyond. Each week, we bring you game changing insights, real world strategies and fresh perspectives to fuel smarter investments and build stronger businesses. Join us as we sit down with expert guests to explore emerging trends and pressing topics.
Across a wide range of industries. This is industry insights. We have Dave and Amy Byers back for another session. And this one we're talking about something that has come up fairly recently. Uh, a new thing for the FedEx space we've seen in a couple of other spaces. But, uh, that is picture proof of delivery, which is a hot topic across all of logistics.
Uh, and how long ago did this actually start in the FedEx space?
Amy Byers: Uh. Probably about a year ago. Yeah, about a year ago. And then they, they just started rating us on it. Right, okay. They started it. Yeah. And they [00:01:00] always do that. Like they, you know, get it in there. They want us to try it and now, but now there's metrics to it.
Mm-hmm. So that's always how it kind of evolves. So there's a difference between when did it start and when did it start mattering. Yeah. When start mattering. Yeah. Right. So that's, um, so recently is when, um, you know, it started hitting your medal score. Mm-hmm. And it's part of a bigger, um, you know. Bigger calculation of Yeah.
Of how you do, uh, in the FedEx network.
Josh Gregory: Obviously, hopefully everybody paid attention earlier since you had to learn it before it mattered. Yeah. But now that it does matter, so Yeah. Now
Amy Byers: it's part of training. Yeah. Now it's part of onboarding and how people, you know, kind of, it's just another new task. Or at
Josh Gregory: least hopefully it's a part of training
Amy Byers: cracked.
Correct. If you wanna do it right, it will be
Josh Gregory: so, so what is it, what is picture proof of delivery for people who haven't heard of it?
Dave Byers: It's just a, it's just a process of taking the picture with the scanner. At the door so that the customer can track the package and, and confirm that it was delivered or where it was delivered to their front door or their, their side door or their delivery box or, or whatever that looks like.
Amy Byers: Yeah. In a [00:02:00] race to stay competitive with, you know, even Amazon, I mean, DoorDash, Amazon, Instacart. You know, yeah, Shopify, all those different, you know, um, all these different, uh, places that are doing it. Uh, it's very important that, you know, Amazon obviously, uh, you get it and they tell you exactly where it is.
So I think, you know, in a, in a race to stay competitive, uh, we knew it was coming. You know, obviously if it's happening over there and, and people love it, you know, if you see a blue door and you don't have a blue door, you're like, where's my box? Where's my box? Yeah. It happens to me
Josh Gregory: all the time. My, my house and my neighbor's house look very similar, but our house, our door is a different color, so I always know it's like, okay, that was the wrong house.
Yeah. Yeah. And if
Dave Byers: you're at work, you can, you can track it right then and say, okay, it's, it's at my front door or That's house. Yeah. And text my neighbor or
Josh Gregory: Can you go get my package, give it over? Yeah. We do
Amy Byers: that. Our, our dogs are kind of. Fans of packages. Ah. So if they're out, we'll text our kid when he gets home from school, I'm like, Hey, there's a box at the front door.
Can you grab it? Um, so it is very helpful. I mean, from a user standpoint, we totally get it. Yeah. Uh, [00:03:00] from a business standpoint, it's, it is in fact one more thing mm-hmm. That the drivers have to do. And there's a lot of things, there's a lot of moving parts now that the drivers have to do. Yeah. Um. On a delivery.
On a single delivery. Yeah. Um, you know, so one more question, one more question code, you know, picture proof of delivery. Uh, but I think because it's being measured, uh, and it's part of those metrics, even though it's not one of the big ones, not big safety or service, it is that customer service piece.
Mm-hmm. Again, another, um, smaller percentage. So make sure you're focusing on safety and service, but when you have the ability to focus on some of those other tasks, um, it's kind of the, and to safety service and to focus on this, um, that that's the big, you know, push and a lot of the terminals, uh, because they know.
That, you know, you're not supposed to hit things. Right. Or damage property. And they know that, you know, that you have to get a 99 right on service or that your goal is a hundred percent on service. So they know, you know, these things. So when they're focusing on these kind [00:04:00] of, you know, lower hanging fruit type improvements, uh, that's where they go, right?
Mm-hmm. The RIDE score and the PPOD. So for us, PPOD is, um. Pretty, pretty, there's a pretty difficult range. Um, we have rural contracts and we have city contracts. City contracts are pretty, you know, the suburban contracts are pretty easy. Front door, take a picture. Um, but the more rural contracts we actually deliver sometimes to intentionally to the doc box or to a mailbox or wherever they want, where the customer actually wants it.
But the PPOD shows a different picture. So Dave actually, um, gets in with our bcs or our senior bcs and they manage, um, they kinda get a hot list of the bad ones so we can correct them pretty quickly. Um.
Josh Gregory: Yeah.
Amy Byers: But there's ways to, to kind of manage through that.
Josh Gregory: Yeah. And you said it was the scanner, so it's not a new device.
They don't have to use their phone? No, it's, it's directly from the same device. Right. And it
Amy Byers: is prompted, so it's not like they have to manually, you know, go in and remember to do it. It says take a picture. Okay.
Josh Gregory: [00:05:00] And I remember when this first started, there was a lot of worry about, um, you know, this is, even though it's a small amount of additional time, that it does add time throughout the day.
have you found that it. Did hurt efficiency to, even though it's just one little thing to, to take a picture,
Dave Byers: it, it, it affects it. But I don't think it's that big of a deal. Yeah. That it's just, it's now just become part of the delivery process. Yeah. But
Amy Byers: not to where someone couldn't do the same 132 stops that they do.
Okay. So he's saying yes, and I'm like. N no.
Josh Gregory: They should be able to just add, yeah, it, it's not a big deal because you're already in your scanner scanning it, and so you just, you know, take one more button. It's literally one more
Amy Byers: step. You
Josh Gregory: just step back, take a picture.
Amy Byers: Now, I will say, if you don't have good scanners or if there's something wrong with your scanners, you have, that's another side piece of that is you have to make sure that your equipment is good.
Mm-hmm. And working, because you can get bad quality images. And it could be that the drivers, you know. Kind of shaking around and moving around and not really caring to stay still and do it, or they're doing it really fast. With's, like blurred. Yeah. Um, but [00:06:00] there could be an issue with your device. So that's another reason that we kind of have to hone in on the spotlight report and get that PPOD report and double check that it's not the device that's just taking a, a poor picture, a poor quality picture.
Josh Gregory: Yeah. Uh, so the, the scanners. Were they already able to take pictures? Like, or did you have to get new devices when this happened? Same,
Dave Byers: um, they just had to turn on the, the functionality of the cameras. Yeah. Okay.
Josh Gregory: So simple software remote fix. Yeah. Yeah.
Amy Byers: Okay. And then there's, um, you know, there's, um.
Regulations or guidelines of how the picture should look. Right. It needs to be the label and the box and a little bit of the background, but not the address and not a person so there's all these, you know, things where it needs to be this and needs to be that, but can't be this, it can't be that.
Yeah. So, you know, on top of all these things that you're trying to get your drivers to do, it's yeah, one more thing, right? That you didn't do it good enough or you didn't do it clear enough. Um, so it's, it's a good way to. You know, um, get into that spotlight. Check your PPOD report and identify [00:07:00] the, the ones that are maybe the same, so you can identify if it's the same driver and all of them are bad.
Mm-hmm. Maybe it is the scanner or maybe it's just one little quick fix that's like, I need you to just pause and take the picture, please. Instead of like, whew. Like running off with it. Yeah. I imagine that
Josh Gregory: was a learning curve. It was because I'm sure it was like, you know. Like you said, people were trying to go fast.
So it was just package picture go. Yeah. And then real, not realizing that you have to at least do a little pause. Yeah, a little pause to get that picture to pause,
Amy Byers: correct. Yes.
Josh Gregory: So you mentioned that there's metrics now for this. Mm-hmm. You know what, what is FedEx actually tracking? When you say there's metrics around this,
Amy Byers: uh, picture quality.
Josh Gregory: Okay.
Amy Byers: Uh, is the big one. Um, and then obviously it tags with missed deliveries. So effective, like obviously the actual delivery goes to the right place. But the, the PPOD that you're getting, um, rated on is. The quality of the picture. Okay. Um, so I think it's just, you know, all those guidelines that I just talked about.
Yeah. Uh, that the picture is clear that the boxes where it's supposed to be, um, that you can see, see,
Josh Gregory: is it like a check mark? Like yes, it's a good [00:08:00] quality picture or is there, there's levels of metrics there. And
Amy Byers: the PPOD report, um, it's, you get the bad ones.
Dave Byers: Yeah. It'll be a, kinda like a pass fail. Got it.
Yeah. It just flags the bad ones, essentially. Yeah.
Amy Byers: And again, some of the, some of the bad ones like Dave, um. Pull. Sometimes they're not bad, they're just not at the front door. Mm-hmm. So whoever's reviewing it didn't realize that we put a coat on it and said Your dog was out. Yeah. You know, or you actually in the delivery notes it says, please leave by
Josh Gregory: the back door.
Forgot the back door.
Amy Byers: And they, and so those two systems don't talk. Mm-hmm. So it does take a little bit of effort, um, for our. Um, AO level bcs and because Spotlight is only available to the ao, Dave has to pull that data, look at it, and then give it to the bc. So I know FedEx is working on making that a little bit more transparent, um, to the BC level so that they can get access to Spotlight, which would be fantastic.
Even a version of Spotlight so that they can,
Josh Gregory: and a quick side tangent for people who don't know, what is [00:09:00] Spotlight?
Amy Byers: Spotlight is a new, um, metric portal that you can kind of jump in and see, not just your metals, but you can see all the different tracking, uh, metrics for customer service ride. Um, you can sort, um, you know, on your ride scores, you can sort on your PPOD.
Mm-hmm. There's a new signatures, um, page on there where you can see. Poor signatures or invalid signatures or fraudulent signatures or whatever they think is flagging. Um, you know, if there's an OP 2 0 1 on file, but it hasn't been processed yet, those pop in there. Um, so it's just kind of like a one stop shop for you to see everything that's going on with your team.
Mm-hmm. Um, again, the big fall on that one right now is that it's only available to the ao. So Dave is the only one that can get in there. That's not what we should be doing. Yeah. At the AO level, um, the BC should be able to see that and make those changes right away. Yeah. Um, and I think they're gonna work on it and give at least some, you know, delegation level, um, access.
But, [00:10:00] um, so the PPOD report, um, Dave goes through what weekly? Yeah. I go through weekly
Dave Byers: mm-hmm. Per terminal and sit down with the managers and, and we talk about kind of what's, what's the hot. Hot items or who's the hot that usually that we need to address or, yeah, you
Amy Byers: usually find it's like a couple people or a couple situations.
Um,
Josh Gregory: what are, what are like the biggest things you see as in common errors or
Dave Byers: blurry pictures? Blurry. Blurry. They just need to slow down. Take a good picture. It's the
Josh Gregory: usual. Yeah. Right. They're too
Dave Byers: close. Um, because you're not supposed to have the actual like address and the picture, everything. Yeah. So, yeah.
So, but we just need 'em to slow down. Step back. Yeah. Take the picture. Make a good quality. And, and then they can move on.
Josh Gregory: Okay. Is it, is this something that FedEx is, I know you said that they look at it like, do they, do you find that they're really aggressive about correcting these, you know, is the terminal manager gonna come, you know, have a sit down meeting with you because you have.
Blurry pictures or, so it is
Amy Byers: part of the metals. Yeah. So under customer service ride, [00:11:00] PPOD, those are in there. Mm-hmm. And there is a score. Um, ours is like 3.65 or 3.75. You need to be over, you know, a, a certain metric. So, uh, which I think is a three, I think they're looking for, um. But, so yes. I mean, it is part of it, again, it's a smaller customer service and, um, efficiency or productivity is a smaller chunk of your metal score.
But if it's a area of improvement or an area of focus, uh, they're gonna bring it up to you. Mm-hmm. And if you're doing really well in safety and you're doing really well in service. They're gonna come talk to you about something. Yeah. So it's a, it's one that you do have to balance, um, and, you know, it's, it's really not a difficult one.
Yeah. So, um, FedEx gave us some really good documentation at first of like what a good picture looks like and what a bad picture looks like. Um, and if you can just recycle kind of those pictures in that message to your folks, um, it really just takes one more thing, you know, one more conversation to say like, Hey man.
You, you need to slow down a little bit. The, all these [00:12:00] pictures are bad. Yeah. Um, we actually had, um, an employee, he didn't realize that at first, but he was just taking a picture of, um, the fire extinguisher in the truck. And I was like, what are you doing? And he is like, well, there's dogs and there's, I, I delivered the package and I have to like run back.
And I'm like, well, you can't do that. Yeah. So, yeah. So he had to kind of, we just had to have like a tough conversation with him to say, like, I, I all the understanding reasons why. Mm-hmm. But that's not okay. Yeah. Um, so it's just a conversation and you know, I was like, what is that? Or a lot of times you'll see, um, new people or if they're rushing or if, um, it gets busy, they'll take a picture of the floor or they'll take a picture of like the patio.
So they took a picture, but you know, it, yeah. They're just kind of, they're just trying to get through, or especially if they. They scanned the box, they closed out, but they didn't remember to take the picture. Now they're at like a different stop, right? So they're like, now what do I do?
Josh Gregory: Well, what, what is the solution there?
So if they've forgotten or if it is dogs where, you know, they had to toss the package and rind, like what is the actual way they're supposed to handle those situations? [00:13:00]
Dave Byers: We, we've had, we've had some drivers take pictures of the dogs, um,
Josh Gregory: be like, this is literally the thing from this that I am running from Yeah.
Right. Which
Dave Byers: that, which, that will flag. But we'll be able to see it. Okay. And say, oh, this, because it's
Amy Byers: such a small percentage of the times that those kind of odd things happen. Yeah. You just fail.
Josh Gregory: Okay. Right. and then it just, it hits your average, but it's, yeah, it's
Amy Byers: a one off. So it's not, it's not every step, but when you get somebody that's habitually taking pictures of the floor or, you know, rushing, those are the ones that you can fix because it's every box.
So it's 132 packages. Yeah. Um, and then you can, you can have conversations with like SPS, uh, we've had conversations where, um, our guy has put. Our box on top of another box. So we get our box and with the Amazon box. Yeah. And they're like, no,
Josh Gregory: can't take a picture of the other box. Can't get correct. Can't take a
Amy Byers: picture.
And then also those ones where it's like we left it at the front door or we left it at the, the dock box, but it said leave at the dock box. But the AI picks up that, that's [00:14:00] not
Josh Gregory: the front door. The
Amy Byers: front door. It has different characteristics, so it thinks it's. Kind of in the wrong place. So those, again, um, you can, you know, choose to dispute 'em or alert the, you know, the PPOD team mm-hmm.
Um, at FedEx or your SPS. But at the end of the day, it's not those onesie twosies that are breaking your Yeah. Your service in that category. It's the ones where the whole entire. You know, like I said, a bad scanner and every single box that day was poor quality. Yeah. So it's just about, um, you know, fine tuning and kind of sharpening the pencil Yeah.
With your staff. Uh, but it is just, I mean, it is another thing. It's another thing. Yeah. It's just another thing. So it does get very frustrating when, um. When you focus on so many of the actual service related things. But to be fair, I wanna know where my stuff is.
Josh Gregory: Yeah. You know? And if it's a blurry, I get, like we talk about, we get it from our perspective.
From
Amy Byers: our perspective, you definitely get it because it is a competitive edge. Mm-hmm. And if, you know, if we lose a shipper because the shipper says all your pictures. Are terrible. Mm-hmm. And this [00:15:00] other shipper can ship our stuff and get clean packages and the customers know where their stuff is. Yeah. It, you know, so we have to do our part, which I think is a piece of what we lose sight of as a vendor to FedEx, is, um, we lose sight that we have the ultimate impact on our, our continued volume.
Yeah. And if something this. You know, small. Yes it is yet one more thing, but it's a small thing. Yeah. Um, in the grand scheme of the things that we have to do every day.
Josh Gregory: Yeah. And, and at the same time, like you want to know, like, like you talked about, if you see a pattern from somebody of where they're taking a bunch of blurry pictures mm-hmm.
Or they're, they're rushing a bunch of boxes, although that is probably a correctable issue, it may be an indication that, hey, maybe they're going too fast or rushing some other things, making small mistakes elsewhere. So it's still like a good piece of data. Yeah. To, you know, get a look at what your employee's day is.
Mm-hmm. And see, okay, there might be something we need to correct them
Amy Byers: on. You'd be surprised that, or you wouldn't be surprised that the people that are on the PPOD report, uh, are probably on your low score ride report as well. [00:16:00] Yeah. Um, and then if you go to the dsw, they're probably on a poor service report also.
Yeah. So, you know, they're, they're getting the stops done. Um, but, you know, definitely rushing. But we have seen that, you know, the scanners, um, as long as we communicate to the
Dave Byers: drivers, we can usually correct it. Yeah. It's not, um. It's not a tough,
Josh Gregory: this isn't something where it's like you, you correct them on it, and then it takes, you know.
Three, four strikes before they learn it. It's usually one conversation. It's in instant
Dave Byers: and I can check next week and see if it's been fixed or not. And if they
Josh Gregory: still aren't fixing it after two conversations with something that's easy, that's probably another sign. It's another indication that this
Amy Byers: is an easy one.
Yeah. You know what I mean? You can, you can get this one. Right.
Josh Gregory: Did you, did you find much pushback at this point or drivers pretty much like it? It's it. They don't even
Dave Byers: realize that we even look at a report to. To see. Yeah. And if you talk to 'em the next week, it's corrected. Yeah. Yeah. And you move on to the next.
Josh Gregory: It's just a part of life now. Just it. This is as in, you know, and I think at this point, if they're working with FedEx or Amazon or anybody in this space, just kind of understands that this is the [00:17:00] new standard.
Amy Byers: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is, that's exactly right. It's just, I mean, from DoorDash to, like I said, everything that you touch has a picture.
Mm-hmm. Proof of delivery, um, or receipt, whatever that looks like. Um, so it's, it's an industry norm now, and we just have to fold in, um, what I say. I would focus that over someone that's struggling with safety service or, you know, not scanning boxes at the end of the day, or not service crossing. I don't think it's, you know.
And FedEx recognizes that it's not as important as that because they wouldn't have given it. a portion of a small category of the weight, but it doesn't impact you. I mean, it is something that you have to manage too. Yep. So you can't just keep doing it wrong. Yeah. But also, you know, take the focus area with the weighted category that it's in.
Josh Gregory: Yep. And one other thing, you know, when it comes to data, I know the, you know, once there's pictures, you're sending more pictures. Did it increase your costs much at all there with the scanner companies?
Dave Byers: No, it, it didn't increase our costs, but it does use more battery. So scanner batteries, you know, it's kind of been an issue, but
Josh Gregory: [00:18:00] there's the age old problem of dealing with scanners and how to update 'em and how to charge 'em.
Right.
Dave Byers: The scanner batteries, you know, they die. Yeah. And it just takes a little bit more to take a picture. Yeah. So we, we've been managing that, which is kind of a struggle, you know, getting batteries to get 'em charged and, and getting that
Josh Gregory: Yeah. Kind of
Dave Byers: figured out.
Josh Gregory: But do you charge in the vehicles or do you ever We have,
Dave Byers: we have vehicle chargers.
Yeah. And we have like a box that we built. That we have like a charging station that we can Got
Josh Gregory: it at the terminal or the office? Uh, no,
Dave Byers: we charge charge at offsite. Well, we'll load them at the, at the terminal and then take offsite. Got it. The B seal bring like the whole box Yeah. With them and then charge it.
Okay. Part of the
Josh Gregory: responsibilities take his briefcase. Yeah. It's like his briefcase. Yeah. And he definitely his responsibility to bring it back too, but he manages the batteries. Yeah.
Amy Byers: But we also, I mean, I know this isn't PPOD necessarily related, but um, we do. Like the scanner audits. Yeah. You know, and we do battery audits, so we're our managers and our leads and supervisors are checking trucks once a week.
And you know, somebody's battery dies, it goes in the side, pouch goes in the doghouse, it [00:19:00] goes in the above. You know that little above area and some of the cutaways. And all of a sudden you're like, you know, it's like the lottery. They think they are doing a contest. They're like, I found five batteries in, you know, truck, whatever, whatever.
You know? And I'm like. Put 'em in the box. Put it in the box. Yeah. Yeah. Can we get those charged? Yeah. Um, but our managers, they, every week they'll, they'll send messages and like, Hey man, like, we need to get the batteries back in the box. Yeah. Because it does, it ties immediately to that. So,
Josh Gregory: um, well, and I, and I will say, you know, it does bring me to something else, you know.
Previously if a scanner, if you lost a scanner or if a scanner died and you had to go the whole day without a scanner, your efficiency's tanked. You can do service cross, like, you know, there's mm-hmm. You can do it by hand. Can you do anything to you? Just fail on all the pictures for that day. Yeah. You, yeah.
Amy Byers: My manual picture. Yeah. Yeah. Pull out your phone or something. You could draw a picture. Yeah. Oh
Josh Gregory: my gosh. On the service cross and draw.
Dave Byers: No.
Josh Gregory: Yeah, that would be exciting.
Dave Byers: At, at our office, we have. I, I put two charging [00:20:00] stations. Yeah. So I keep batteries charged. If someone struggles I'll, I'll run batteries out to 'em.
Okay. Or, uh, we've been outfitting like our team leads. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because they manage a small group of people around them. They'll carry extra batteries and if something goes sideways, they can. They can go meet, they can meet up with them real quick. And I also have extra scanners. Yeah. So if a scanner's giving 'em issues, which happens a lot, we can, we can run out and give 'em a scanner.
Josh Gregory: But more than ever, like if you're a small contractor, this is something where having a spare scanner's not an option. Right. You know, obviously it was already a bad day if you had to have a guy go out without a scanner. But now you also fail every picture. Yeah. Yeah. So,
Dave Byers: and now the new scanners have built in batteries.
So the newer version
Josh Gregory: Yeah.
Dave Byers: They're built in.
Amy Byers: Yeah.
Josh Gregory: Perfect. Well, I think that's everything when it comes to this new, I think so, yes. Picture proof of delivery system, which is, it's fairly new, but I mean, I, I, it is something that we want to hit on because it is something that is a part of your metals, it's a part of day to day life now, and, and getting used to it.
How to manage it, how to [00:21:00] improve it, and how to be effective with it is really important.
Amy Byers: Yeah. Yeah.
