"In dire straits." When asked about his feelings in the past month, these four words first appeared in Gan Chengcheng's mind. Gan Chengcheng is the person in charge of the North Branch of Zhongtong Express Shanghai Jiuting. Last May, he bought the North Branch of Jiuting and joined Zhongtong express to become the branch owner, responsible for the express delivery of the last kilometer of all communities in the area where the branch is located.
On April 1, Puxi area, where Jiuting North Branch is located, entered the global sealing and control management. Although nearly ten employees of Gan Chenghe branch had lived in the office of the park where the branch is located in advance as early as mid March, the extended sealing and control time still made them face the embarrassment of no delivery for the first time.
Pause: someone, car, no delivery
"Since April 1, the number of packages to be delivered has gradually decreased. Originally, I thought it would only be sealed for a few days. Our network didn't have a holiday for the Spring Festival, which just allowed the employees to have a rest. I didn't expect that later, not only there was no delivery, but buying vegetables became a big problem."
In fact, as early as March, Gan Chengcheng was no longer living in his own community. Moving his home to the company to sleep on the sofa and lay a floor is an effective way for him and his employees to respond to the temporary sealing and control and deliver goods normally.
However, after entering April, this approach began to fail
"At the beginning of April, the transfer center in Puxi was suspended due to the escalation of epidemic control. That night, our packages were pulled to the transfer center in Pudong for delivery. Later, Pudong couldn't deliver them. There were no goods from the transfer center, so naturally there were no packages to deliver." Gan Chengcheng said that such a situation was quite unexpected for him, because at the beginning of 2020, when the COVID-19 broke out, the community was once sealed and controlled for management, but the express delivery has not stopped.
Even if there are packages that can be delivered just a few days before April, many communities do not receive express delivery, let alone send packages into the community to their homes, which once brought a lot of trouble to the residents of the community.
On April 5, Gan Chengcheng received a call from a customer in a nearby community and asked if there was his package in the warehouse in the park, which was medicine for emergency rescue. At that time, many roads had been closed, and the community was not allowed to send packages. Gan Chengcheng and his men searched for two hours in the package pile in the warehouse. Finally, they found the package of life-saving medicine and sent the medicine to the residents with a special application from the community.
Look for medicine in the parcel pile for two hours
Waiting: volunteer work more tired than delivering packages
Such temporary requests for help from residents or communities also became the norm in early April.
"Probably from April 5, I began to take the employees living in the park to volunteer in each community, tally and distribute the materials purchased by the group, and then send them to the residents' homes," Gan Chengcheng recalled. Because the delivery of materials in the community needs to wear protective clothing, the delivery intensity in the community is much higher than that of sending packages at ordinary times. "There is (sweat) water in the gloves after three or four hours."
Brothers who volunteer together
Before the closure of Puxi area, Gan Cheng's network also applied for two vehicle passes, which can drive in Shanghai during the closure period. However, after the suspension of the company's transfer center, the two 4-meter-2 and 7-meter-6 trucks were useless until Gan Cheng received a temporary order from a boss.
The boss wants to donate nearly 1000 pieces of protective clothing and three tons of alcohol. He needs to transport anti epidemic materials from Jiading to Songjiang.
To Gan Cheng's surprise, it took him one night to deliver such a truck of goods that normally takes only one hour. "Due to the cross district transportation, many intersections have to pass through different villages and towns during the period, and the navigation is useless. We need to constantly detour to find the way. We don't arrive at the designated place until 3 a.m. and we encounter many temporary inspections on the way back. When we return empty after unloading, some intersection checkpoints don't recognize the pass, so we need to detour more roads until 8 a.m“
Even so, Gan Chengcheng only symbolically charged a little money for oil, "the boss was going to give me 10000 yuan, but people are donated materials, and I'm embarrassed to accept money." Gan Chengcheng said, "in the next few days, there were also neighborhood committees in the community who needed material distribution and asked us to pull goods. We didn't make money by this. There was no charge for cooked ones and a symbolic charge for unfamiliar ones."
Self rescue: run all over Shanghai in half a month
However, with the continuous extension of the sealing time, Gan Cheng began to be a little confused.
In the dry outlets, some of the employees who work as customer service, drivers and operators have a base salary, and the other dispatchers make money according to the number of pieces received and dispatched. In addition to the married employees, most of them live in the apartments rented by the outlets, and their meals are also provided by the outlets in the park.
During the period of closure and control, the meals in the park were supplied as usual, and the employees closed in the apartment could also receive the meals prepared in the park every day. What they didn't know was that the price of vegetables had increased three times than usual.
"In early April, the nearby vegetable market was closed. Although the center also has hair masks, hair dishes and disinfectant, we have to bear all employees' three meals a day. We still drive as far as Pudong to buy vegetables. Potatoes have risen to more than 5 yuan a kilogram. There are also employees living in the park who have to find their own place to make nucleic acid every day, and the expenses are reimbursed by me. More than a dozen people make more than 10000 yuan a month." Gan Chengcheng said that coupled with the rent of factories and staff dormitories, as well as utilities, the monthly expenditure will be about 100000.
"It's not a way to go on like this. We must find a way to make money." On April 15, Gan presented that "now the company has a car, a 4-meter-2 pass and a 7-meter-6 pass. If you need vehicle transportation, you can contact..." Information, hanging in their own circle of friends.
It was around that day that he and the dispatchers began the "business" of delivering orders in the city, similar to the errand boys on the platforms such as flash delivery and meituan. They drove the car wherever they needed delivery.
"Basically, I start at 10 a.m. and come back at 12 p.m. and drive all day. There should be no place I haven't been to in Shanghai in the past half a month," Gan Chengcheng said. Although they are all delivery, such point-to-point "errand" delivery is much more tired than before. The key is that every day is random, there is no fixed time and direction, and in the past, His work scope is basically within seven or eight square kilometers of jiulitang street.
This kind of life of the errand boy can at least keep his subordinates who used to make a living by receiving and sending pieces from having no harvest for a month. However, Gan Chengcheng also stressed to his subordinates from time to time that it is OK to send one piece and charge an errand fee, "who dares to make a fortune at a sky high price at this time, I know to clean up one by one!"
Resumption of work: the car and meeting room are paved
In the past half a month, the city's dry list has been presented, from food to diapers, from vegetables to coke, and recently even Starbucks. He even thought about doing some sideline work and transporting the crayfish from his hometown to Shanghai for sale. However, with a number of express delivery enterprises including Zhongtong included in the white list of the second batch of enterprises returning to work and production, Gan Chengcheng saw the hope of regaining his old business.
"At the end of April, the company's transfer center began to resume operation, and the warehouse in the park began to have new parcels to be delivered," Gan Chengcheng said. "These two days, I have been fishing for people from the community where the employees live. According to the requirements of resumption of work and production, the employees can't go back to live after leaving the community. I rented two offices for them across the park. Now more than 30 people have resumed work. There are paved floors everywhere in the car and office."
"Although the delivery volume of one day can not be compared with the delivery volume of more than 10000 tickets per day before the closure, everything is recovering in a good direction," Gan Chengcheng said. "In fact, the outlets have been losing money since the intermittent closure of the community in March, but the most difficult time has passed, and now we still have to be full of hope."
At the headquarters of Zhongtong express, nine relief measures were also introduced at the end of March to strengthen the assistance to the outlet brothers. In addition to the 20.21 million yuan of "xiaoge.com" fund, which was set up in the whole year, it provided an additional 50 million yuan to the family members due to the accident and injury caused by the establishment of "xiaoge.com" fund; On the basis of the original 100million yuan special fund for the prevention and control of COVID-19, 50million yuan was added to increase efforts to ensure the health and safety of front-line employees and the security and stability of the network; An additional 500 million yuan of interest discount special loan for the epidemic situation was added to help alleviate the financial pressure of outlets due to epidemic control.