Trailer Inventory

Hello everyone, I work for a trucking company and just got tasked to start tracking incoming and outgoing trailers to and from the yard. We have several different yards...I'm really not sure where to start.

Hi kbrim11238 and welcome to ExcelForum,

You do know where to start, you just don't realize it.

Take pencil to paper and write down how you would track the trailers if you didn't have a computer. Write down the details of exactly what you would do for three trailers, one in Yard A, and the other two in Yard B. After you have that information, you (we) can start computerizing your process.

Lewis

This is really more of an inventory management question than an excel question exactly. You might have better luck looking there to start.

That being said,

If I was in your shoes I would try and quantify what exactly it is you need to keep track of.

Do you have a certain number of trailers and you need to keep track of where they are?

Is the trailer number variable and you need to keep track of how much finite yardspace you're consuming?

Are you trying to track timing so that you don't have three guys trying to get trailers out the same time three more guys are trying to get trailers in to the same yard?

Or is this value center stuff that you need to track where the dollars are going around?

I guess my advice is, sit down with stakeholders (eg, whoever asked you to start doing this, and ideally a few people that you will need to get info from) and try and identify what data specifically you need to keep track of, and how you want to input it (barcodes? Human entry? sign in/sign out?) and what kind of output you want (eg, do you want to query where stuff is, what reports you need, etc).