How tough are these jobs, really? Straight out of CDL school in February I hired on with a company driving a dump truck. I like the work but have realized that my experience isn’t worth a nickel unless I apply for another dump truck job and I want to get tractor trailer experience to improve my employability in the future. I could try to work side dumps or something like that but I'm really not interested. The only other tractor trailer jobs available to newbies in my area are with food service companies, like US Foodservice, which is one company I’m considering. I figure if I make a move I have to do it pretty soon since my last tractor trailer training was about two months ago.


I talked to a former co-worker a while back who worked food service for a short time then quit. He said he hated it. When I questioned him he said it really wasn’t all that demanding physically but involved a lot of loading/unloading using hand carts. I definitely got the impression that he was basically lazy and didn’t want to do anything but drive (he was overweight and a heavy smoker). Unfortunately he quit the company so I can’t get any more info from him.

Can anybody give me any insight as to what your day driving a food service job is like?

You might pm a poster named Toby on here. I'm not sure how often he checks in, but he is doing that very work and can provide some insight for you.

I worked for SYSCO FOODS, a while back. I hated it also. First off, I'm not lazy, and I'm a very ambitious individual. The problem I had with it was the hours, and the heavy lifting.
If you are expected to start in the morning, at 04:00 am, (which is typically the time they start) with 40k load on the truck, and are expected to make 30 or so, hand delivered stops, in unfamiliar towns, by noon, or earlier, for 35k a year, then they're crazy.
There are a lot more worth while jobs out there, you can do without breaking your back over it. You go to country clubs, and restaurants. You park your truck, sometimes a half mile, and three flights of greasy stairs away from the kitchen, or storage area, on a 100 degree day.
You load a hand truck with 150 lbs, worth of frozen, or refrigerated, or dry goods, and walk them to the storage areas...Some stops you repeat this process for an hour or more, before you finish the delivery. You very often, have to dig through the trailer for certain items which are mislabeled, and or even have to return to a customer with one item. This sometimes entails a lot more work to do, than you think. Long and short of it is that over a period of a day, you move 40k lbs worth of food product, on your back every day, for 8-10-12 hours of your day. They expect a lot of work, for the money they pay. I'd never go back to it. I'd stay in that dump truck, if I were you.
Why, may I ask, are you so interested, in driving tractor trailer, unless you want the open road..? You can get into UPS, or Fedex ground, and do drop and hooks all day, for the same money, or more than the food services pay. You can be a shuttle driver, and work four days a week, for UPS, or FedEx doing only one or two drop and hooks per day/night.
You can also take a job with Staples, or Office Depot or something, doing a few pallet drops a day to a few stores, and back to the yard, for the same money.
I'm not a big guy, I only tip the scales at 149lbs, and most of the loads I put on the hand truck at SYSCO weighed more than I did. I had a very hard time going up, and down stairs, and stuff like that, with a full load, on a hand truck. In my oppinion, it's a waste of time, and effort when there are so many other jobs out there, of which pay a lot better, or even the same, which involve less risk, and work. I fell off of the truck once, when a pile of frozen foods avalanched, in the truck, and pushed me out the side door of the trailer. I landed wrong, and had a pretty bad wrist injury as a result. You don't want to mess with that ####.

__________________
" And I only had one lesson "

I plan to relocate in a few years, and it makes sense to me that having class A experience will make me more employable and earn more money than only having class B experience. Other drivers have told me that my dump truck experience won't be worth squat if I try to get a job for somebody like an LTL carrier, which I'd like to do at some point.

I'd love to work for UPS or Fedex or whoever doing drop and hooks but my understanding is that these companies will only hire experienced drivers.

Burky, thanks for the tip but I don't have enough posts yet to PM. If any body else has any comments I sure would appreciate hearing them.

We had a topic on this a while back. Do a search for SYGMA, and you'll find some good info there. I was a driver and supervisor there for 7 years. The other poster gave a pretty good description of how difficult it can be. I worked delivering beer out of a side loader for 3.5 years before SYGMA, and found foodservice work to be easy in comparison.

The upside of foodservice is being home more often. Many routes are less than 12 hours, often with a helper/co-driver (# SYGMA). I have several friends that work for both SYGMA and SYSCO. SYSCO is the parent company of SYGMA, but the way.

SYGMA is their chain restaurant system that delivers to places like Wendy's, Boston Market, Texas Roadhouse, Steak n Shake...

SYSCO will deliver to more mom n pop type places that are a real pain in the ### due to small volume and obstacles like stairs and parking that 1/2 mile away.

Where do you live? I might be able to give you an idea of what SYGMA house is near you, what they deliver, and how their transportation management is.

I did beer and food both. they do both suck and they do a good job of keeping you poor. Beer is definatly worse. You havn't lived untill you hauled kegs of beer into a bar basement with no stairs, only a hatch in the floor behind the bar and a ladder. That was my last day.

Food service is like they said, very early. I had to start at 2am. lots of stops. I did this fr a temp agancy for a very short while. Like most do

Beer work may keep you poor, but foodservice will not! In five years as a driver, I only made less than 50k in my first year, and over 60k my last two. I still made over 50k as a supervisor-not including bonuses. I think beer delivery my best year was about 36k.

SYGMA has a yearly safety bonus, and then a quarterly performance bonus as a driver. If you max out, you can add a few thousand or more annually to your driving wages. I always maxed out, and made between 5000-6000 extra a year.

Also, when you take into account the actual hours away from home/working, you're making significantly more than you would in probably 90% of any OTR type work.

Hi Slim66,
Burky mentioned me to you. In regard to driving for a food service company
there are many different local types available. It depends on your willingness to work and at what level. You need to explore options. I started out with one
company at 15.00 per hour and after a couple of months I was offered another position for 18.00 per hour. I average 50-55 hours per week. I start at 5:00 a.m. on this job and can work as late as 6:00 pm or as early as 2:30pm. it depends on the number of stops, the waits for a dock, and the person who checks you in. If you take the average week and the pay, the money is not bad at all. This company I am with now is based out of Warren, Michigan but we use 53' to shuttle our loads to a Gary, Indiana terminal. This company tracks you and your every movement via GPS. We punch in and out at stops. We hand unload 90% of our trailers. You might have two or three stops mixed in on one pallet. The company I started local with didn't track us, most stops were pulled off by whole pallet. We carried eggs, etc... ran out to the chicken farms every now and again. That schedule was 6:00 am until about 3-4:00 p.m.
Just so you know some grocery company like Centrella, the drivers pull into the dock and they are unloaded by store personnel.I guy I talked to this week started at 10:00 pm He is just starting out so he only was working two days a week plus O/C the rest of the time.
Local grocery/food delivery (Chicago area) = bust *** make very good money, go from a 42" waist to 40" in a month and a half, sweating more then Elvis at his last concert. You go to bed at 9:00 p.m. and your up at
3:30 to be at work by 5:00 a.m. work, repaet process. As I was told by a Sysco driver, it is not a career (like OTR) it is a lifestyle.You do have some time with your family in the evening and your home every weekend. All in all I say I enjoy it more then restaurant management.
Hope this helps, good luck to you.
Toby

Hi Burky, Posted for slim66 in regard to food delivery. I remember when you had that guy from Falcon get ahold of me for info. It is kind of cool to be able to help guys out with some early experiences I have encountered.
Thanks,
Toby