V39-26

Question

A large retailer operates a limited fleet of same-day-delivery trucks. For years, each neighborhood delivery hub has been assigned the same number of trucks, regardless of the daily order volume in that neighborhood. To shorten overall delivery times, senior management now plans to let neighborhood hubs trade truck assignments freely. Management argues that trading will move more trucks to the neighborhoods that rely on them most intensively, thereby reducing average delivery time across the company.
 
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 neighborhood hubs facing tighter shipping deadlines currently use their trucks more frequently than other neighborhoods
B. Whether neighborhood hubs currently using trucks more intensively could achieve shorter delivery times due to having more trucks
C. Whether using the company’s own trucks reduces delivery time more effectively than outsourcing to third-party carriers
D. Whether certain neighborhood hubs currently have idle trucks at any point during the day
E. Whether neighborhood hubs will be required to record truck-trading activity in a central scheduling system

Bunuel · Answer

Official Solution:

A large retailer operates a limited fleet of same-day-delivery trucks. For years, each neighborhood delivery hub has been assigned the same number of trucks, regardless of the daily order volume in that neighborhood. To shorten overall delivery times, senior management now plans to let neighborhood hubs trade truck assignments freely. Management argues that trading will move more trucks to the neighborhoods that rely on them most intensively, thereby reducing average delivery time across the company.
 
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 neighborhood hubs facing tighter shipping deadlines currently use their trucks more frequently than other neighborhoods
B. Whether neighborhood hubs currently using trucks more intensively could achieve shorter delivery times due to having more trucks
C. Whether using the company’s own trucks reduces delivery time more effectively than outsourcing to third-party carriers
D. Whether certain neighborhood hubs currently have idle trucks at any point during the day
E. Whether neighborhood hubs will be required to record truck-trading activity in a central scheduling system

(A) Irrelevant. Knowing tighter deadlines lead to frequent truck use does not demonstrate that adding more trucks shortens average delivery times.
 
 (B) Correct.  This option assesses if the assumed causal link, more trucks leading to shorter delivery times, is actually going to hold true, and thus evaluating the plan’s assumption.
 
(C) Irrelevant. This introduces a comparison with third-party carriers, which is unrelated to the proposed internal redistribution plan.
 
(D) Trap Answer. Presence of idle trucks indicates redistribution feasibility, but without establishing that shifting trucks actually reduces delivery times, this fact alone is insufficient to prove that the plan will work. Thus, this fact can help us to possibly predict if the plan will fail (in case the number of available trucks is zero), but at the same time, this information won't help us confirm that the plan is likely to succeed (in case the number of available trucks is more than zero), thus giving us only a partial answer.
 
(E) Irrelevant. Procedural record-keeping doesn't address whether truck redistribution affects delivery speed.

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

V39-26

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