What Do You Love About Working At (your Company)? What Do You Hate?

What I love about my job are the stores. There is plenty of entertainment to be had. The other day a pulled into a store where they were putting oil in their forklift. This is because they had run it out of oil and seized up the engine. A few days before at the same Grocery Chain a young man asked me if I smelled smoke coming from his forklift.....I replied "No but I can see smoke". This forklift caught on fire twice in the same week! After it had been repaired once.

What I don't like about it is the dispatch system. The open bid system that can be manipulated. The driver before me bids and has a choice of 7 runs. He bids and I am next....I have a choice of two lousy routes. I bid and the next driver has a choice of 5 routes....I think what troubles me the most is that they might think I don't know what is going on...but I do. So, those who have been there are comfortable and those who not at the top of Union Scale might be able to make up for it if they would let us. But that is shut down by Knight Transportation who seem to come in and soak up what is left of the decent routes.

I guess this is why I am thinking of moving on. I find that Teamsters in a right to work state are like children who were raised by vampires....There is eventually going to be trouble. I guess I am just getting too old to fight for anything anymore. They'll look up one day after I have had enough and someone else will be doing all those non-paying routes and I'll be elsewhere being used and abused by another American company that rewards those who are all about what they can get out of it.

I have a vacation coming in April, I'll stick with it 'til then.
 
What I love about my job are the stores. There is plenty of entertainment to be had. The other day a pulled into a store where they were putting oil in their forklift. This is because they had run it out of oil and seized up the engine. A few days before at the same Grocery Chain a young man asked me if I smelled smoke coming from his forklift.....I replied "No but I can see smoke". This forklift caught on fire twice in the same week! After it had been repaired once.

What I don't like about it is the dispatch system. The open bid system that can be manipulated. The driver before me bids and has a choice of 7 runs. He bids and I am next....I have a choice of two lousy routes. I bid and the next driver has a choice of 5 routes....I think what troubles me the most is that they might think I don't know what is going on...but I do. So, those who have been there are comfortable and those who not at the top of Union Scale might be able to make up for it if they would let us. But that is shut down by Knight Transportation who seem to come in and soak up what is left of the decent routes.

I guess this is why I am thinking of moving on. I find that Teamsters in a right to work state are like children who were raised by vampires....There is eventually going to be trouble. I guess I am just getting too old to fight for anything anymore. They'll look up one day after I have had enough and someone else will be doing all those non-paying routes and I'll be elsewhere being used and abused by another American company that rewards those who are all about what they can get out of it.

I have a vacation coming in April, I'll stick with it 'til then.

I take it your paid by the run and not the hour? That bid system don't make sense, if there are 7 routes and the man before you bids, shouldn't you have your choice of the remaining 6? Or is dispatch lying to you and saying there is only 2 left when in fact there are 6, if thats the case you have a greivence and could file and get paid, I would think.
 
I take it your paid by the run and not the hour? That bid system don't make sense, if there are 7 routes and the man before you bids, shouldn't you have your choice of the remaining 6? Or is dispatch lying to you and saying there is only 2 left when in fact there are 6, if thats the case you have a greivence and could file and get paid, I would think.

Oh I know what is going on but the Sr. Drivers are actually in on it because they benefit from it. But vacation is over and Cerberus has bought Safeway (Tom Thumb) and will no doubt be getting out from under Associated Wholesale Grocers and will do their own warehousing. In many ways I don't blame them. But Tom Thumb is not Union and I am getting too old and too tired to fight the fight anymore. Winco will be putting in a warehouse locally but I don't think my milk hauling knees will last that long.

We shall see what happens. We are hoping Safeway will take back the old Albertsons warehouse in Fort Worth and we will continue as Albertsons/Safeway and sell the smaller warehouse in Alliance to Winco. Until then I will continue to drive a Kenworth that doesn't turn to the right!

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Unionizing in Texas is pretty tough. There is a chance that the future of my Local may be reduced but if you are going to Unionize Tom Thumb....It is going to take some extra effort. No time like the present. I wish I was 20 years younger.
 
Well I'll give this a shot,
What do I like about my job? I like the customers, I get to deliver to, I like the other drivers, there all pretty cool. I like that it's during the day and that I get to go to cool places. Like I got to deliver to a big horse racing track and casino today. I like the other drivers that I run into usually they seem to be pretty cool. Today I was taking a pallet of beer and wine down the lift gate and the pallet had a real good lean on it and the Coke man came over and helped I said "Thanks, this lift gates a little rickety" He said "I was watching you ride the lift gate down and it was making me nervous." I said "I don't really like this lift gate." He said "Just by watching it, I don't like it." He then showed me the lift gate they gave him and his was beefier then mine, but it wasn't without it's flaws.

On a side note, I think lift gates are a great thing you can literally do your job anywhere with a lift gate, the only issue with them, is they get used constantly and are not really well maintained at least, that's been my experience, but we have them where I work and electric power pallet jacks too and they get the job done. Actually though I don't mind side loader trailers there good for the beverage business.

What don't I like, the learning curve of being new to pretty much everything. However, the good news is slowly slowly, but surely the learning curve is starting to straighten out, there sending me out on my own more and more, now so I must be doing something right. The other things I don't like are all the ancillary stuff that comes with being new and of course working the extra board. That kind of blows at times.

However where I work currently people don't stay on the extra board forever and ever and a lot of the trucks and trailers are now assigned and really once you get a route it can be a pretty good gig. You know what your doing everyday you know where your going all the customers know you, you get to build a relationship with them and get free cans of pop or make your self a sandwich at the VFW or AMVETS haul or both get free cans of pop and a sandwich. The one AMVETS haul I was helping deliver to let us make our own sandwiches. Other fringe benefits some of the girls who work at the bars and restaurants are pretty cute, so we get that going for us.

Sometimes though my days at work can be a tad longer then I would like, but that's life, usually though most of the route guys by 1,2 and 3 there all starting to come in. The bulk trucks around 1pm and the side loader route trucks by 2 and 3 a few straggle in a tad later, but usually by 2 and 3pm the side loaders start coming in.

I like the training that I was given as a new driver at the company I work for, they put me with one of there OTR road drivers for a week and that helped a lot of things and progress was certainly made. I've noticed that everyone has there own truck driving style.

I don't know it's an okay job it's a good first job and a real good gateway into the food service trucking world. Plus I get to be home every night and off on weekends.
 
After another long day, my last stop offered me something to drink, I want coffee of course, he gave me two cups.

Upgrayedd with two d's for a double dose of pimpin' for the wired ride back.

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Well, let me try this again. What do I like about my job? Well for side loader work, I like that we load are bays by customer and not by product. A lot of the other beer distributors load there trucks by product so you have to build orders, which is a pain and some of those guys have to count all the beer on there truck before they leave. I don't have to count my cases everything is shrink wrapped and ready to go. I do have to count my kegs, but that's only one day a week, I can live with it.

As for the job eeehh it has it's ups downs and I am in between, right now I'm kind of Luke warm for it, I can take it or leave it. It doesn't really give me a great deal of satisfaction or entertainment one way or the other, I guess you could say it's just a pay check, which by the way I am going to get my first real pay check now that I have been bumped up to a regular route driver! It might be alright money so that's cool and all.

Although my customers are pretty nice, a couple stops I have I could live without, but nothing terrible. I like my new truck they took my old truck away (It was slated for retirement, actually all the trucks in it's number series were slated for retirement and they put me in a brand new 2015) One of the bosses asked me how I liked my new truck, I told him it was nice and I thought they were going to move the trucks they were not retiring down and give me an older one, but that's not what they did. Our trucks are a cavalcade half the fleet is leased from Pensky and the other half is leased from AIM. The trailers the company owns, but has AIM or Pensky take care of them the Pensky trucks are the nicer ones. Although there are a few 2014 or 2015 AIM trucks and there better then the 2009 AIM trucks we have. The 2009 AIM trucks are kind of junky, there cheap. The Pensky ones are not nearly as cheap, they have power mirrors and fog lamps, all that good stuff, the AIM trucks have none of that.

Generally AIM my impression of them is they are a very cheap company, of course some of that could be customer preference, because the company changed a few things with the newer trucks from both companies, what I think they did was went bargain basement and then realized that was kind of a mistake so they when it was time to get some new stuff, went for better equipment and some of that also has to do with public perception, they don't want us driving around in a bunch of junk, because it makes them look bad after all there name is on the side of the door. The newer trucks are bigger models then what we had and they switched from Kitty Cats to fairly high horse-powered for Beverage Distribution Cummins Turbo Diesels, these new trucks I can tell have way more horsepower.

What don't I like, well standard company stuff, this isn't a knock against my direct bosses there just doing there job, but upper management where I work isn't the greatest and my company is way top heavy and they have there production charts and graphs and all that's just a bunch of nonsense is what it is, what in my opinion and I could be wrong, but it's management trying to give off the illusion that they are in control when really they have no control what so ever. If management had control and really truly cared, which they don't then things would be fixed, obviously it's no secret this industry is riddled with inefficiencies on all sides of the spectrum.
 
I got a new truck two weeks ago. The plastic is still on the seats, the company wanted to make sure it's clean, oh it's clean alright besides some dirt and stuff that gets tracked in from out side, I don't smoke or chew tobacco so that helps a lot although I know some yard hostler smoked inside of it.
Any how some of our trucks were really really bad. Mine not so much I have to bring some rags to work so I can clean up the inside of it on Friday. I also think that this weekend they are giving all the trucks a bath and mine needs a bath the first day I took it out on the road it was raining. We got a lot of new trucks at work and the company told us to take care of the stuff, they said you guys don't want to be like Miller here in town driving a bunch of pre 2002 Freightliner FL70s or even worse Labat driving a bunch of stuff that's 20+ years old! Trade in my 2015 Freightliner for a 1982 Ford L9000 12 bay straight body. Seriously they have those and send them out on the road everyday. Not where I work that's way to old for us, despite what ever money woes the company may pretend to have, the older trucks that they flat out own, they never send out on the road. Infact one of the road drivers got mad at the company and told them he was going to use some 1996 International that sits at some drop lot, to pull his set of doubles and the company responded with "No please don't, you have to take one of the newer trucks."
 
That tractor is filthy!! Clean it up or get wrote up!!!!

Go ahead write me up, fire me, I don't care, I've been with Sysco eight years now, I can probably get a job anywhere.

If I drove it every day, it would be clean. I'm in a different truck pulling a different trailer every day and I am not willing to clean every filthy truck we have seeing how they will all be trashed again next week. I'm sure I can find some paper towels in the bathroom, but show me where the company keeps it's whisk brooms and window cleaner and other cleaning supplies for us drivers to keep these cabs clean.

Once in a while I'll ask a supervisor why we don't have a squeegee, we have a fleet of trucks but no way to clean the mirrors and windows. None of the supervisors know. When they really get filthy, I have to go in the bathroom and grab some paper towels, wet some of them and spend ten minutes or so getting things visible, but it would be a 90 second job with a proper squeegee.

It happened again last week, so i asked the current boss, and he was surprised, he assumed we had them as they had them at his old house. So he wrote himself a note and put it on his desk, so now I have a little hope for a new squeegee, and maybe a bucket, who knows.

So that's what I currently like about my job, the new boss (okay he's been there a couple of years), but he's one of the few there that seem reasonable.
 
Thats good Ted, I hope some things turn around because of the guy! I just want to hire folks, I went from a bid of 2500 cases in 5 days to around 3700 cases, I'm ready to go back to my 2500 cases if that ever happens, I sure hope it does, I was happier then.
 
Once in a while I'll ask a supervisor why we don't have a squeegee, we have a fleet of trucks but no way to clean the mirrors and windows. None of the supervisors know. When they really get filthy, I have to go in the bathroom and grab some paper towels, wet some of them and spend ten minutes or so getting things visible, but it would be a 90 second job with a proper squeegee.

We don't have a squeegee but they do provide glass cleaner. I prefer to use my own. The problem is, nobody takes care of anything. A company provides a squeegee and it gets broke, run over, used to clean diesel off tanks etc. I understand why companies get tired of buying equipment.

I keep my windows pretty clean. I don't mind providing windex. It helps me do my job professionally, giving me the best vision possible. I use old retired house towels from home.

Guardrail
 
Right now AWG has decided to begin to mess with the driver pay....again. We have to go through the exercise of re-bidding, bringing in outside haulers and losing a few good drivers over it. And when the holidays begin, all the outside haulers won't work.

So it is here we go again at Local 767 in Fort Worth. We will see how long this goes on.
 
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We don't have a squeegee but they do provide glass cleaner. I prefer to use my own. The problem is, nobody takes care of anything. A company provides a squeegee and it gets broke, run over, used to clean diesel off tanks etc. I understand why companies get tired of buying equipment.

I keep my windows pretty clean. I don't mind providing windex. It helps me do my job professionally, giving me the best vision possible. I use old retired house towels from home.

Guardrail

We have a squeegee where I work, it has been run over by a truck a couple of times.
 
What do I like about my job and what do I hate?
Well right now it's kind of hard to say what I like and dislike.
What I like about my job delivering food, I like the fact that some of the stuff is lighter then when I did beer, beer was constantly heavy. I like no CODs not usually and depending on the stop it's usually in and out for the most part.
I like my discount at the company grocery store chain.

What I don't like:
I don't like being new right now, not really having a route not totally sure where I am going and having long days which unfortunately that's going to be going on for sometime I fear.

I don't like going down town and some of the places I have to go down there because you might have to back into a parking garage off the street and then ally dock into the loading dock I don't care for any of that.

I don't totally like the companies incentive system and performance bonuses. Some of it I think is set up not to pay out and a lot of it is nickle and dime stuff to me. I don't know why they can't just say look over all at the end of the year you showed up did what you had to do worked safe yadayadayada you get an extra $1,000-$2,000 bonus in December or something.Instead of all the petty nickle dime pay outs scattered throughout the year.

In general I don't know how I feel about this whole thing I think it's better then where I came from that seems to be true, and I hope that within the next 10-12 months I get it down and it becomes something I can just get through fairly regularly and get a routine going.
 
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