Everyone has their own comfort, style and design. The purpose of following my lead was just to get a feel for the common spreadsheet. The steps to formatting columns was to show you that a “cell” can be formatted individually, or in groups, by columns, and even in rows. The key was knowing how to highlight the groups of cells, or focus on each own individually. Getting back to the first Blog that started with formatting the columns, then a job number, followed by Location, address, and on and on; the whole purpose was to give you a starting point and see if you could fill in your own column blanks. I got to where I gave a basic list of columns for the date, and job; both typically in any form of service will always be the reference to go back to when looking up the work at a later date.  If your starting out, you can include other informational topics that include Delivery location, the amount of stops, a comment column to add in information that might help remember the load activity, issues, or even other references to the load.

      That first Blog was indeed left to let you decide what information to add, but if you are not sure, add what you used to write down, and make the first row of the spread sheet the title or topic of each column. If you still need a list to guide you, here is some of the following, in an outline fashion:

• Date
• Job Number
• Number of stops
• Preloaded or Live load
• Driver Load and driver count
• 1st location name, address, city, state, zip code, and Phone Number (all itemized in its own column)
• Bill Of Lading Number
• Date of Pick up
• Time of Pick up
• PU Reference Number
• First, second, third, and fourth Purchase Order Numbers of the Bill of Lading (comes in handy for dedicated drivers, to have a list of the first several numbers to match with the actual bill Of Lading)
• Number of pieces (can also be a few columns to run along side the Purchase Order Numbers, or delivery Stops
• Weight (Again for each delivery stop)
• Deadhead or empty estimated miles (basically the load is paid in advance by estimated miles to travel)
• Loaded Estimated miles
• Total Pieces (that is the sum of the individual pieces for each stop)
• Total weight
• Total miles (should you have listed individual estimated distance for each stop)
• First Delivery (or can be second pickup location) Name, address, City, State, Zip Code, Telephone Number, Contact person (another idea for a column…for all stops).
• Comments
• Issues
• Date of delivery
• Time of Delivery
• Delivery or drop number
• Beginning miles(filled before starting the series of stops)
• Ending miles (Filled in when the load is completed in full)
• Total Actual Miles (Can be used to compare with the estimated miles, as to use to get into practice to find routes that lessen the distance, or even show how out of route you went).

      Not everything listed interests each individual person, others will want to add more information, to make sure they have information that will help identify a certain load in the future, should it need to be recalled. The last suggested item (Total Actual Miles) was not to fight with how much you should be paid, instead, a guide towards trying to find the shortest routes to come close match or even exceed the estimated miles for future trips. Remember, this is a blog to get you to design a blank spreadsheet to gather information that you can always use to refer to and even use as a future reference to any given load, location, and alike; don’t go out of your way to look to show how much miles you did against what anyone estimated…it is possible in some cases to have loads estimated where you can cut the distance, making more for less miles traveled. Remember, that estimated miles scale that might be used goes for everyone.

      Let’s get back to the spreadsheet.

      When you start out, you may not know how many stops you will have, so designing your spreadsheet for simply two stops (pick up and location), and when you have a basic idea of the number of stops, You can actually highlight the group of information from the second location of the first row, go to edit, and click copy, move the mouse to the next empty cell to the right, go to edit and click paste, and it will copy the highlighted information. Then, with a little editing (and if you copied the same data, just highlight the data, right click, and click clear content). Then you can use the topic to click each column and format the column to the desired category (i.e., Date format, currency, special (that then can format for zip codes and telephone numbers).

Creating Designed Limits

      Workbook spreadsheets do have a limit to how many cells each spreadsheet has, but the number is so high that unless you use one spreadsheet to enter every load you will do over a year or two time period, you won’t need to worry about running out of cells to use. My basic rule is to use a spreadsheet based on a specific period of time, such as every month, but since there is only three hundred and sixty five days in a year, and even with two or three loads a day, you won’t ever reach bottom. When I fuel, it never turns out to be every single day of the year, so that one spreadsheet will be used for the whole year…but never for a three five or ten year period. A Workbook can have an unlimited amount of spreadsheets, so why not make identical spreadsheet for each month, when it comes to load information. And, might as well decide on what each work book will represent, in my case, every aspect of professional driving represents every work year, and in each workbook, the spreadsheets include every monthly load period, all miles and hours driven and worked (so I can actually compare each yearly quarter or time period, and make charts of comparison, which spreadsheets and databases can do). Here is a list of a Yearly Workbook I keep:

• Truck information (Year, Make Model, Miles it had when assigned, License plate Number, VIN, Date assigned, and Insurance Information. Later, this was information that was not going to be added to so I copied the column and data, and included it in the top of the Truck Maintenance spreadsheet)
• Truck Maintenance
• Permit Book Information (includes the Permit type, state it is for, and expiration date)
• 90 day countdown of miles until the next required truck maintenance and service
• Daily hours worked driven hours, and driven miles
• Monthly Recaps (actually looks like the recaps table in the covers of driver’s logbooks, but mine has the columns that does the math, so I simply have to “input the daily hours”, and the formulated columns fills in the amounts).
• Monthly Load Information
• Yearly Load income, expense sheet (it includes columns for scale purchases, and lumper fees, but since those are reimbursed, I don’t currently use these two created columns)
• Fueling information (includes location, amount of fuel, cost, surcharge, and surcharge total cost)
• Yearly Miscellaneous Expenses (Used for receipted information for supplies purchased, such as straps and load locks, lights for the Trailers, additional hazardous materials placards, Cleaning supplies, and parking)
• Yearly Truck Expenses (Oil, lights for the truck, Washer Fluid, and anything else specifically for the leased truck).
• Weekly Per Diem (for tax purposes, and counts the days I am on the road, with a column that multiplies the days worked on the based daily per diem allowed)

      To be more specific, there is twelve spreadsheet for every month for the loads, four 90 days Countdown spreadsheets over the course of the year, twelve recap spreadsheets for each month, and basically one spreadsheet for the rest of the list, that holds my information for that year. These are my designed limits, making a spreadsheet for specific periods of my daily work day (i.e., spreadsheets for each months load are filled in when assigned, loaded, and unloaded; Fuel spreadsheet used whenever I fuel, and I carry over the amount of the surcharge total to the Load Income expense spreadsheet; All truck and trailer repairs that help recall the dates, locations, issues, and repairs at the end of the month when submitting the monthly repair report to the company, etc.). If I used one spreadsheet for everything above, not only might i use all the cell to its limit, but it would be that much harder to manage. In the way I designed my workbook, when it comes to periodically checking the expiration dates of my permits, I don’t have to just go to the permit book, and each individual spreadsheet, or the whole workbook, can be either copied into, or attached to an email to pass on information (I have never passed on a whole workbook, but like the permit information spreadsheet, and the trip submission spreadsheet, they can be sent separately in an email).

      Don’t be intimidated by what you should have or how it will look, by expecting it to  need to look a certain way. The workbook is exactly that, a book of spreadsheets that will always be a “work in progress”; always improving on its appearance, the information gathered, and how it can be used later. You have to feel comfortable designing the spreadsheets that fit your specific needs. Over time, additional columns will be added or eliminated, and how it appears will be through the person’s preference. There is only two real challenges in the beginning: Deciding what you want to have in the form of information; and, actually making it a routine and habit to add that information as it is obtained.