About Packing and Dispatch Work

At a first glance, the packing and dispatch work would seem to be something of a low level job.  Of course, that is true if one considers the technical aspect of printing of a newspaper or other complexities of newspaper production such as news gathering or editorial job or page making, but all of the above good work can be made or marred by the way the dispatch work is carried out, either done efficiently or not. If the newspaper delivery is delayed an hour, then it becomes as waste paper, and most of you know how people use waster paper.

But I had the feeling that the manager under whom I was working was of the opinion of the dispatch work as a lousy job and he had treated me as a man who was doing just that kind of job.  For him, appointing newspaper agents was the work he had relished the most apart from keeping the cost of running the branch office as low as possible, which alone is not the mark of a good manager, or is it? But, I will defer to the next posting about the manager and his attitude toward my work and the dispatch work itself and confine myself to the dispatch work in this post.

Dispatch Work Preparation:  Dispatch work begins after the printed papers reach the dispatch section by conveyor from the press. The materials used for dispatch work like craft papers, jute twine (now plastic is used instead of jute twine), paste for sticking labels on the parcels, etc., must be kept ready for the work. The jute twine is received in bales (as shown in the picture below left), and the workers make the jute twine ready for packing like balls (as in the picture right) as it would be easier for them to use while packing the parcels.

  

Labeling and Checking:  The branch office will give a list indicating the amount of paper (indent) to be sent to every agent served from the branch office for the day. There were about 400 to 500 agents at that time and the number of copies printed was from 75,000 to 100,000.  The printing speed of the machine at that time was 15,000 to 20,000 copies per hour.

Labels are kept in the rakes in the order in which they are sent. The labels must be taken from the rake in that order and the number of copies for each agent is marked for the day. Most of the workers are not educated, some not even literates, but the work of preparing labels involves the reading the names of the center, and also in some cases the news agent’s name.  When the names of the center spell like the same such as wadakkanchery and vadakkencherry, and the names such as Mannarghat, Makkaraparamba, or Mallpuram in Kerala,etc., he must be able to read and mark the indent correctly. This needs some training on the part of the worker. I have kept at any time at least two workers who are able to do the work. Sometimes, I have to do the job myself when the trained workers do not turn up for work, but I personally check the marked labels for its correctness daily.

Types of Packing:  The newspaper parcels are packed in two different ways. One kind of parcel is which is directly dropped at the newsagent offices. These are main centers on the way of the route of that particular transport where the driver of the car or the van drop the parcels. These parcels are packed with just covering the upper and lower part of the parcels by craft paper (Picture below right). The other type of parcel is that which is sent by bus by the agents at main centers to the nearby areas. For example, the Erode agent will send  parcels of the agents of Arasur, Arachalur, Chennimalai, Ingur, Kavundambadi, etc., which are towns and villages near Erode. These parcels are packed with craft paper completely covering the newspaper (Picture below left).

Supplements and other enclosures:  When I first took charge of the dispatch work, the supplements to the daily paper were usually printed in the head office at Madras (Chennai) and sent to Coimbatore by train. For the agents whose indent is less than 50 copies, the supplement parcel is enclosed within the the main paper parcel and sent as a singles parcel. For those agents whose indent is more than 50 copies, the supplement parcel is sent as a separate parcel.  These parcels also must be arranged and kept at particular places ready to be loaded with the daily parcels in the cars or vans. Besides the supplements, the sister publications of The Hindu such as Sports star, Frontline, etc., printed in the head office are also sent from here.

The supplements sometimes arrive without packing and we have to pack the parcels here. Sometimes, they come packed from the head office itself. Here, there is one more problem. The parcels are packed in the head office based on the last week’s order of the agent and the current order of the agent may be less or more. If more, the additional number of supplements should be sent along with the newspaper. If less, the extra copies of the supplements should be removed from the parcels.

Sometimes, there may be more than one supplement for a day. For example, on Sundays there may be even three or four supplements. In those days, the additional copies over and above the order of the agent of the previous week must be enclosed with the newspaper. For this, all the three or four supplements are enclosed within one another and made like one copy. For a typical Sunday, we have to keep ready some 300 to 400 supplements for this purpose.

Different Editions:  There were three editions printed from Coimbatore, the Kerala edition, the Tamil Nadu edition, and the city edition. Approximate copies for each edition were as follows. Kerala 20,000 copies, Tamil Nadu 40,000 copies, and the City edition 15,000 copies. After the printing of each edition was over, the press staff will come and ask me in the dispatch section whether the number of copies printed was okay for me. They usually print an extra 20 to 30 copies to meet any shortage that may happen due to counting error, etc.  After getting okay from me, they will start printing the next edition of the paper.

The Kerala edition starts usually around 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.  It will be over in one hour.  Usually, the Tamil Nadu edition starts at around 12:30 to 12:45.  Typically, the pages of Tamil Nadu edition will be ready even along with the Kerala edition pages, but sometimes, the press people have to wait for one or two pages of the Tamil Nadu edition after the Kerala edition is over. Usually, the printing of Tamil Nadu edition will be over 2 to 2:30 to 3 a.m.  After the Tamil Nadu edition is over, invariably, the press people have to wait for even half an hour for the City edition paper printing as the city edition paper will have to carry very latest news for the readers.

The supplement parcels and other parcels such as sports star, Frontline, etc., that are not enclosed in the parcels but sent as separate parcels must be kept outside the dispatch section so as to be loaded with the main edition paper parcels for each transport.

Transport Routes:  There were six cars that carried parcels to Kerala and four vans that served Tamil Nadu.

When I was working in the dispatch section, I knew first-hand the name of every center served by each transport in the order in which the parcels are delivered by the car starting from the office. I knew even whether a particular center was a direct delivery point or a bus parcel from a delivery point, and from which delivery point was it a bus parcel.

New Recruits for Dispatch Work:  When I recruit people for dispatch work, they at first can do some type of work only such as bringing the packed parcels to the cars or vans for loading, to take the labeled and staked papers for packing, etc. After some time, they can do the work of assisting the packer in packing the parcels, and then after some more time, packing.

These are the main features of the groundwork that are needed for the dispatch work to go on smoothly when it begins.  I will explain further about the actual dispatch work in my next posting.