V39-26

Question

A last-mile delivery company operates a limited fleet of trucks from neighborhood hubs. For years, every hub has been assigned the same number of trucks, regardless of how many deliveries its neighborhood requires each day. Starting next month, management will allow hubs to transfer trucks and drivers to other hubs as daily volumes shift. Management claims that moving trucks toward neighborhoods with more scheduled deliveries will reduce the company's average driving time per delivery.
 
To evaluate whether the company's plan is likely to achieve its intended result, it would be most helpful to know which of the following?

A. Whether the company's average driving time per delivery has increased in recent years
B. Whether hubs that transfer trucks away would require substantially more driving time to complete their own scheduled deliveries
C. Whether outsourcing some deliveries to third-party carriers would reduce driving time more than reallocating trucks would
D. Whether hubs can predict their daily delivery volumes accurately enough to transfer trucks before shifts begin
E. Whether hubs will be required to log transfers in a central scheduling system

Bunuel · Answer

Official Solution:

A last-mile delivery company operates a limited fleet of trucks from neighborhood hubs. For years, every hub has been assigned the same number of trucks, regardless of how many deliveries its neighborhood requires each day. Starting next month, management will allow hubs to transfer trucks and drivers to other hubs as daily volumes shift. Management claims that moving trucks toward neighborhoods with more scheduled deliveries will reduce the company's average driving time per delivery.
 
To evaluate whether the company's plan is likely to achieve its intended result, it would be most helpful to know which of the following?

A. Whether the company's average driving time per delivery has increased in recent years
B. Whether hubs that transfer trucks away would require substantially more driving time to complete their own scheduled deliveries
C. Whether outsourcing some deliveries to third-party carriers would reduce driving time more than reallocating trucks would
D. Whether hubs can predict their daily delivery volumes accurately enough to transfer trucks before shifts begin
E. Whether hubs will be required to log transfers in a central scheduling system

The argument. The plan: let hubs transfer trucks and drivers as daily volumes shift. The claimed result: lower average driving time per delivery across the company. The hidden assumption: time saved in neighborhoods that gain trucks will not be offset by time lost in neighborhoods that give them up.
 
A. Incorrect. Repeats "average driving time per delivery" word for word, but a past trend says nothing about whether this plan will reduce it going forward. The echo rewards recognition, not reasoning.
 
B. Correct. This tests the offset directly. If donor hubs would need substantially more driving time to finish their own deliveries, the company-wide average may not fall and the plan fails. If they would not, the savings are net gains and the plan works. A yes/no answer swings the conclusion in opposite directions, which is exactly what an Evaluate answer must do.
 
C. Incorrect. Whether outsourcing would work even better is irrelevant. The question is whether this plan achieves its intended result, not whether it is the best available plan.
 
D. Incorrect. Even imperfect volume forecasts still move trucks in the right direction on average. Prediction accuracy affects how smoothly the plan runs, not whether reallocation reduces average driving time.
 
E. Incorrect. Logging transfers in a central system is record-keeping. It has no bearing on driving time per delivery.

Answer: B

curatelycurious · Answer

I chose answer E with this understanding that the efficiency was reducing because these extra work or recording the truck trading activity - leading to longer delivery time

bhanu29 · Answer

Core assumption:
More trucks at high-demand hubs → shorter delivery times.

B is correct because it directly tests that link.
If adding trucks doesn’t reduce delivery time, the plan fails. This might happen for multiple reasons including supply chain mismanagement, less workers in the hub, inefficient workers in the hub etc.

E is wrong because record-keeping doesn’t test whether reallocating trucks reduces delivery time. It introduces a new issue not central to the argument.

Answer: B.

RonPurewal · Answer

Some edits are suggested below. The justifications for these edits:

this color:  The inclusion of both "To shorten overall delivery times" and "thereby reducing average delivery time across the company" is redundant; one of these needs to be removed (GMAC doesn't write redundant givens, especially not when it comes to articulating the specific goal of the problem/argument)

this color:  The exact replication of specific words that   could   very easily be rephrased without any change in their meaning—in this case, "short  delivery times"—is something that pretty much only happens in  incorrect  answers on the official test (as a honey trap for lazy test takers who just see the repeated words and don't bother with actual comprehension of what's being said about them). Accordingly, my tentative edits rephrase the passage into  average  vehicle-hours, but the correct answer into  total  vehicle-hours. (The "fixed number of deliveries each day" was added to the front of the passage to ensure that the conversion between average and total vehicle-hours is airtight.)
 
 this color:  vital to add these details. 
• The original wording said "trade", but "trading" (in the literal sense—back and forth) wouldn't have any effect on the numbers of trucks in the various neighborhoods.
• "And drivers" because additional trucks are useless if you don't send over additional drivers to drive them.

I also changed "retailer" to "delivery company" for tighter cohesiveness and better fidelity to the real test. (GMAC's overarching habit is to include only  relevant  details in CR passages. so e.g. GMAC will only say "retailer" for an entity whose retail sales actually figure into the substance of the passage.)

Lmk what you think

bb · Answer

Thank you Ron! I like it.

I have made a few small tweaks to polish the language and added 1 more option:

A last-mile delivery company operates a limited fleet of trucks from neighborhood hubs. For years, every hub has been assigned the same number of trucks, regardless of how many deliveries its neighborhood requires each day. Starting next month, management will allow hubs to transfer trucks and drivers to other hubs as daily volumes shift. Management claims that moving trucks toward neighborhoods with more scheduled deliveries will reduce the company's average driving time per delivery.

To evaluate whether the company's plan is likely to achieve its intended result, it would be most helpful to know which of the following?

To evaluate whether the company's plan is likely to achieve its intended result, it would be most helpful to know which of the following?

A. Whether the company's average driving time per delivery has increased in recent years
 B. Whether hubs that transfer trucks away would require substantially more driving time to complete their own scheduled deliveries
 C. Whether outsourcing some deliveries to third-party carriers would reduce driving time more than reallocating trucks would
 D. Whether hubs can predict their daily delivery volumes accurately enough to transfer trucks before shifts begin
 E. Whether hubs will be required to log transfers in a central scheduling system

V39-26

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