Thought I was going to die delivering for Family Dollar.

My company has an account with Family Dollar. They were in need of drivers so my regular account threw me on there for a week.

The folks working at the FD office and the stores themselves were wonderfully friendly. No complaints there at all.

Trouble started when when dispatcher showed me the rollers I was going to use. Never did that before but she explained a little about them and said the store managers would help if I got stuck and they did. I was not expecting how difficult this was going to be.

Every single store I went to, seven in all, had tricky docks to get to, which is fine, got to practice somewhere might as well be on the job. One of them had no dock at all and you had to back your trailer up a slanted incline to get to the stairs. Not only was I pushing a thousand boxes up hill on the ramp but there was a %10 tilt to the side. Looked like trailer was about to fall over from the outside, and looked like one of them carnival houses from the inside. Ramp kept falling over to the side it was leaning on, whole thing took 8 hours for that one load.

That was not what was about to kill me though. After my first load I started sweating big time and was drinking an entire gallon of water in that four hour time period. Then even a bit more for the next two stops after that. By the second load i started feeling cramps and called up my dispatcher asking if i could just do the third one the next morning. But they were reminding me if i did that I would not be able to take my next so like a fool i went and did it. By the time I finished that last one it was after 2300 and I was paying off the staff there to help finish the load for me.

Out of hours and no truck stop within 50 miles that would give a free shower I just wiped myself off with a wet wipe and tried to sleep. Covered in bruises and cuts all over, puss forming in infected places, and constant cramping in most my body kept me from sleeping for a long time.

Now I am not a feeble or old man, my regular account has me hand unloading around 2000 tires a week one by one, that is car, truck, and even semis.

The pay is great and I know there are plenty of folks that do this everyday, I salute you guys. But if you are anything like normal, you better be ready if you want to do this!

 

I drive a dedicated account for JB Hunt, I love that job and am happy to be returning to it next week.

The one good thing that came out of the FD experience was I lost a couple pounds, could barely swallow a bite those days. No apatite and severe pain in my throat after a coupe bites of anything.

Another good thing is my dispatcher promised never to even ask me to do those guys again.

 

I think I would have preferred the doing this up north, not sure.

Forgot ot mention but I did all these stops in south Texas along the Mexican border. Laredo and a bunch of other little towns off of US-83.

I am heading back up to Dallas right now and I feel like I am drunk, everything is all hazy so going to pull over and sleep a while.