My first year as a Dot Foods driver

First off, just to nip stuff in the bud for those who don’t qualify; you have to live within a 100 mile radius from a DC or a drop yard to work for Dot. Now that’s been made clear…

I went to college for ten years, I've got four degrees, one of which is a doctorate, I worked as a physician for a group in a clinic billing upwards of 800 thousand dollars a month after I stopped running my own practice, I taught middle school and high school and I even taught college for a few years. Why, you might ask, would a guy like me drive a truck for a living?

Time. Time is the simple answer. Time spent working, time spent getting paid, time away from work and time with family. Money isn’t everything; time is more valuable.

I had driven a truck for a few years before I decided to better myself through education and I remembered you got paid for what you did in that industry. For years after graduating I had been a salaried slave... it didn't matter how much I worked, I still got paid the same.

As a doctor and a teacher I had zero time to myself. I literally worked 17-18 hours a day at what I was doing. I was home every night, but I wasn't really home. My family were mere feet away from me in other rooms of the house, but I was stuck in my office working until it was time to pass out. Why not go back over the road? I wasn’t ever doing anything at home anyway.

I figured I'd go back to driving where I'd at least have to shut down after a certain amount of time instead of working myself around the clock and I'd probably have more time to myself and more time with my family. Of course, picking the right company was essential in seeing that assumption come true; that first company I drove for had me out for months at a time. That was ok as a single man, but a family man needs something else.

Looking around the web, reading what other drivers said about different companies and asking some people in the CDL license schools about companies that were hiring, I focused in on Dot Foods because I kept hearing the home time was the best.

After a year of working with them, I can say it's probably true. I'm not sure what other companies do for their drivers, but there were PLENTY of weeks where I worked 4 days, I was home one or two nights during the week and I got a full weekend with a half day on either side of it. Please note... that is NOT typical, at least in the sense of expecting it every week. After working a couple of months that were really demanding and kept me out a lot, my wife freaked and the company eased up on me. Once we got through the transition of me being gone, it was easier when they started working me more and I've had my share of being gone 5 and 6 days straight, but at a MINIMUM, I have been home every weekend. It might not have been an entire weekend... it may have been half a Saturday and all Sunday or home on Friday night and out on Sunday, but I'm home AT LEAST every week.

Since most people are curious about home time and money more than anything else, even with those many short weeks where I'd make just 700 or 800 dollars, I still grossed over 61 thousand in my first full calendar year, and I still have two years of mileage pay increases that come at 6 month intervals. Delivery drivers (vs. transfer drivers... more on this in a minute) average 100 thousand miles a year. At a minimum, the mileage increases bring an extra 4 grand a year until you top out. Top out pay is hard to explain... last year the company did so well they gave us all a 3cpm increase, there is a new 2 or 4cpm incentive for engine performance (a mix of speed, rpm and idle percentage), and if you want to be a trainer, you get an extra 2cpm on top of everything else. It's easier to say you'll start at 30cpm (unless you have verifiable experience, then you start higher) than it is to try and figure out what you’ll actually be making, especially in terms of what you’ll be making years down the road.

They promise 50 or 55 grand for your first year, I can’t remember which. It doesn’t really matter. You’ll make at least 60 your first year. That isn't just my experience talking either; everyone I’ve spoken to has told me they haven't heard of anyone not making 60 their first year. (Again, more on delivery drivers vs. transfer drivers in a bit… that might be where the company reported average of 50 thousand for first year drivers comes from…)

Any discussion about pay in any job has to include benefits. Some of the most awesome are the bonuses. Dot is one of 20 some odd privately owned companies on the Fortune 500 list. When I hired on at the end of 2014, they were proud that they had done 5 billion (with a B) in sales that year, and they should be; it took the company nearly 60 years to hit that mark. The next year in 2015, they did 6 billion in sales. That tells you a bit about how well they’re doing, huh? If things are going well for the company, every quarter there are profit sharing bonuses. There are different levels of bonuses based on company performance, but the best to expect is 6 percent of your gross earnings from the previous quarter. (I’ve grossed around 800 a quarter on those alone.) If you keep your nose clean, you get 300 a quarter for a good CSA score. There are quality bonuses for individual departments. And all this doesn’t even include the health benefits. Their coverage and options are phenomenal. They offer a health savings account… I could write for hours about how great it is, but let me assure you, it’s awesome. They pay for you to have long and short term disability insurance. You can get a ton of other specialized elective benefits too. I’ve worked in lots of places… you might be able to find better but you can certainly do worse than Dot’s benefits.

Ok… delivery drivers vs. transfer drivers. Delivery drivers throw groceries. Pallets are stacked with tons of product. You are the lumper. You get paid 8 cents per case and 20 cents per line item. If that sounds muddy, let’s say you have 100 boxes of Oreos. You get 8 dollars for the case count and 20 cents for the individual line item. It might sound cheap in that simple example, but on a 3500 case load with 430 line items, you’re looking at a 366 dollar load. Sure, a load like that might take you 12 hours to break down, but do the math… 30 dollars an hour is pretty good scratch. The thing is, there aren’t a ton of loads that are that big that take that long. Most of those go to senior drivers who actually bid for them so they can get home more predictably and it keeps the rest of the fleet from having to deal with them. The more picky a customer is in how they want things broken down, the longer it takes and the less you make per hour, but there are plenty that are way easy to work with and you can walk out having broken a load down in reasonable time frames and earned anywhere from 60 to 175 dollars an hour doing it.

Transfer drivers… they just drive and bump docks or drop and hook. I think this might be where the “average” pay is figured up according to the company. I actually earned less than other people I know who were first year delivery drivers last year… I just don’t see how 50 grand is the average, unless they don’t count bonuses earned in a year or transfer drivers just don’t get miles, but a first year transfer driver could easily be making less than a first year delivery driver. Not to say they don’t make any money. I’ve talked to a lot of old hands that are transfer drivers that make near 90K, but mathematically you can only drive 700 miles a day, and things have to go smoothly to do it. At start out pay, even with the first 2 cent increase after half a year, that’s right at 50 thousand for a year of 3000 miles each week. So transfer drivers can make more than 50K, but they’re making more per mile or they’re staying out longer to do it. They’re certainly driving more than a delivery driver does in order to do it. At 600 miles a day, five days a week all year, that’s more than 150 thousand miles. Delivery drivers average 100 thousand miles a year. (I would hesitate to think that the company has enough miles for every transfer driver to get 3000 miles every week, so that could explain the low first year driver average salary, but what do I know?)

Some guys think they’re above throwing groceries. Some prefer it. It keeps you in shape and breaks up the monotony. To each his own.

Either sort of driver makes detention/extended pick up pay, 17 hour layover pay, drop and hook pay, extra money on any stop on a run past your 4th delivery, pallet drop/pick up pay, hourly pay for meetings, 8 day out pay and all other sorts of ways of getting money. If you want to be a trainer, you get the extra 2 cents per mile, 80 dollars a day for each day a trainee is with you and both of your meals are paid for while you’re training. You can be a trainer after driving with the company for a year. Trainers and 10 year employees get to go to the annual business meeting. Everything is paid for, including mileage to drive to it or airfare if you fly, every other year spouses get to go, it’s a full weekend of training, awesome food, big events and tons of booze.

The trucks are Volvo automatics. Some people gripe about them. I don’t know why; they maintain the fleet to amazing standards. We have a pass at weigh stations because a trooper or DOT officer would be wasting his time looking for anything. The trucks are governed at 68 mph. Some people say they’re crappy, but I’ve passed plenty of other trucks on hills at full gross weight, so I’m not complaining. They’re not the roomiest trucks; it’s sort of difficult to find room for a microwave and a refrigerator/cooler, but truck drivers aren’t looking for mansions and I enjoy the tight turning radius of the short wheelbase. I think our trucks are just about yard trucks sometimes… I’ve seen other trucks struggle to back in where I have no trouble. They trade and buy new stuff all the time… trucks don’t get too old here. As a new driver to the company, I got a truck with less than 36 thousand miles on it. Even with several hundred thousand miles on them you probably wouldn’t be able to tell an older one from a newer one because they’re maintained so well. There’s one truck in the fleet that has more than 2 million miles on it. A ’95 model, the same driver has been with it from the day he got it new and never wanted anything newer. He still gets 2000 miles a week and it does just fine. Some people have said you have to slip seat until you get your own truck, but I think that’s dependent on the DC. Everybody in our location got their own truck from the start, but we were new last year, so we may be an exception.

Everything so far has been clinical and mathematical… How do you actually get treated by the company? I can say it’s very clear it’s a family centered outfit and you’re treated like a human being… for the most part. We’re drivers… there are going to be times when you get 15 hours of sleep in a week and none of it is in a stretch of longer than 2 hours; that just comes with the territory, mostly because some deliveries happen at midnight and you have to work through the night or you need to drive through the night to get somewhere at 6 AM and you find it difficult to sleep during the day when you're normally up and awake. They sometimes seem to forget we’re not machines that can power down instantaneously for 10 hours straight at any time of the day... It's not like they don't give you time for breaks; the breaks just might come at a time that is counter to your natural sleep/wake cycle. Any company will have its share of stuff like that but it’s obvious they try to keep that to a minimum and spread it out amongst all the drivers. They absolutely have no problems with you shutting it down if you get tired. They want you getting home safe just as much as you do. Of course, if someone were habitual in being late, it would probably be a problem, but they wouldn’t hire someone with that sort of character flaw in the first place. As a matter of fact, they only hire 7 percent of the drivers that apply. That really says something about how selective they are when every company out there (including Dot because business is booming and they keep expanding) is totally starving for drivers.

I can’t speak for the entire company and all the staff at each DC, but the people I’ve worked with have been great. I might be biased though… I came from the medical field and the public education field. I dealt with nothing but a lack of common sense all day long for years, so any company that runs a decent ship would probably seem like the best in the world to me after what I’ve been through. I’ve come across some people that don’t appreciate the company. I honestly think they’re the odd outlier in that they’re the sort of person that can’t be happy with anything and always have to gripe about something. Don’t get me wrong though, there are times when nothing they do seems to make sense, but we’re all human… nobody can be perfect.

In regards to the amount of work they’ll put on you, it's no secret they try to oblige you in what you prefer... if you need to be home more they'll take it easy. If you just want money, they'll keep you running, but you'll still get home every week (unless you ask them to keep you out). I eased into the lifestyle over my first year and asked them to work me into the ground this year and I’ve been earning 1300-1600 dollars a week recently. There is no shortage of drivers earning in the 80s. Many bump 90K in a year.

They even try to tailor the sort of loads you get to what you prefer. Some guys want full trailers unloaded at one stop. Others want multiple stops all over the place. Some guys prefer late night or early morning stuff, some guys can’t stand that. They can’t make everyone completely happy, but it makes their job easier and you’re more likely to stay if they try to suit your tastes. On that note, I think Dot has the lowest turnover in the industry. Sure, people still leave, but it’s nowhere near what other companies deal with.

I honestly can’t find anything more than little nitpicking stuff specific to me that I would tell anyone is something to be concerned about if they were thinking about working for the company. Driving a truck is what it is, so past that you need to find a company that you can tolerate based on their policies, compensation and how they treat you. You can’t go wrong with Dot.

Feel free to ask any question about something I might not have addressed already. You can probably tell I won’t mind talking about it. Just remember, I’m working my ### off… it might be a while before I get back to you.