I saw a rig with a trailer, I've never seen that before, is it a pilot program? The trailer was identical to the truck.
As Brick said, they are used to shuttle pkgs out to "satellite" trucks out in the country,
used to "store" pkgs for a route that cant fit everything into the one truck (sort of a "two trip" without actually making the second trip),
or the route has one very large delivery (or pickup) stop that wouldnt fit into the truck with all the other stops in it.
We've got a couple of them here. All just depends on the situation they're needed for.
I ended up having a quiet, calm peak season after that first week. The three new guys who helped us in our loop did a phenomenal job -- to the point that they didnt need any help at all after that first week. That is a huge relief when you only have to concentrate on your area, and not have to worry about what the newbies are doing.
We did blow away every single record for volume in our building this year. Considering that peak was shorter than normal this year due to late Thanksgiving, our building was 36,000 stops and 63,000 pkgs over last year (over the whole of peak). Those are insane numbers. It was told us by upper management that Lansing had the highest volume change in the entire Midwest region. We had 155 drivers in the building this year, 85 in our center. I remember when 85 was the entire building.