Delivering Beer

Have a 40 year old son, just quit State job ( told him not to , but vested with 20 years retirement ), and he wants to get his CDL and deliver beer locally. He was hired by a reputable distribution company, who is giving him CDL training to begin his driving career.
I told him this was lots of finger-printing, but he is in great physical shape. Has it in his mind to do it.
He was told his pay was on a per-case basis, 30 cents per case, stocked in the store. The other drivers told to expect 3,000 case weeks in the summer, about 50 hours, and about 2500 cases during winter, about 40 hours.Lots of beer sold here in Bikini State. All local deliveries,same city.Good benefit package, nice folks ( he says ).
I have always been an O/O so not real sure about this deal. Any FACTUAL thoughts ?

 

Why not have him do food. The pay you say is only 750 to 900 a week which isn't a whole lot especially for all that work!

 

I'm working on the cheap at the moment too because I need to be home to care for my Dad. I do a lot of fingerprinting at the moment for not that much money, but some money is better than none. I think it depends on the individual. I have often stated in other threads, I'm the dumb one cause working just doean't bother me, and I do take the view that the exercise is paid for.
A lot of that beer will palletized as well, and be taken with a hand truck.

 

I wish him Good Luck.

Could be a decent gig.


Serious beer drinkers down here...........

 

@Mike2633

 

Hello,
Where do I begin, oh yes here are two links you may find helpful:
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/beer-trucking-in-pictures.304406/

and
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...rage-distribution-business-works-yawn.273887/

Both of those were written by me and I think they are some of my best work, not to toot my own horn of course.

I did it all bulk truck and side loader every picture that was taken was a picture of a truck that I drove, when working for the beer distributor. I eventually quit because well I just didn't like the job and two it wasn't why I got into this business it wasn't what I wanted to do, but I gained valuable experience and wouldn't have traded it for anything. I work for Gordon Food Service now which is 100xs better then beer and a much much much better company with good pay 30K more a year then beer and nice equipment with a lot of different opportunities that come up.

However if your son wants to do beer, well what I need to know is what kind of operation does the distributor run? Are they all side loader or are they brought into the 20th century and have a mixed fleet of bulk trucks and side loader trucks.

There are plenty of beer distributors that are still only rolling side loader which well, is fine until you have to go to a big grocery store then it's a real pain in the rear end. Trust me I know delivering beer sounds like all fun and games, bars and skantaly clad female bar tenders and all kinds of praise for being "the beer guy" no one ever goes "Oh good there's GFS with 500 pounds of french fries yeahh party hard!" I've never heard that from John Q Public. Although this new high school I got to gets these spicy potato wedge fries known as "tater babies" and I really want to try them, but I digress.

Now lets get down to brass tax of the beer business. It is a government regulated business that operates on the "three tier system" the legal name of this is the ABC system which is why you have the ABC State Liquor and Package Stores what this means is that a brewer licensed by the government is allowed to brew beer, that brewer then is able to sell that beer to a distributor licensed by the government of course who then has express written distribution rights to distribute that particular brand with blessings from the state and brewer of course in whatever counties they have blessings to deliver beer in by the state and the brewer of course. The distributor then is allowed to sell beer and deliver the beer to licensed retailers licensed by your friendly government of course. After all we don't want all that beer to get into the wrong hands? That's why it's imperative that the government keeps an eye on these things.

Any who, I really do need to see the name of the company he is working for the distributor I worked for was pretty big time and we had bulk and side load and actual OTR truck load to and night shuttle because we had 3-4 drop lots. Actually they asked me before I quit to work at GFS if I wanted out of delivery and onto night shuttle or truck load and truth be told, I would never work there again as a delivery driver, but I would work there again doing night shuttle or truck load I would do that, much.

However if he's working for small hole in the wall 1 or 2 county distributor then chances are there all side loader and well, that kind of stinks when you have to go to groceries stores. Remember all female bikini clad bar tenders I was talking about? Yeah that doesn't really exist. Instead what you get is sometimes some very nice people, but other times a bunch of grumpy grumps who rule the back loading dock at the grocery store the same way past historical figures have ruled other countries. Wally world is very good at ignoring beer truck drivers like there not even there, pretty much get treated sometimes like a sub-human.

Anyhow if it's side loader he could be loaded down with anywhere from 18-25 stops a day I don't think I ever did more then 25, but let me tell you 25 is a good amount. You will drive about a foot park the truck, get out start opening bays (if your on side loader) well and that's another topic for disscusion as well is the warehouse your son works out of an manual warehouse or automated using a vertique machine?
Here's what vertique is:


Anyhow that will depend on how the side loaders are loaded. If he works out of a warehouse where you have a bunch of shelves and guys running around on pallet jacks with head sets on what that means is the bays of the side loader will chances are be loaded by skew. Where I worked our warehouse was automated and our side loaders for the most part were loaded by customer which was great, because you just wrote down who was in what bay and you would get to Gabbys Market and you would look and see Gabby was in bay 2 on the drivers side and you would throw open bay two on the drivers side grab your wheeler and get moving.

Now here is the thing, doing beer you will be collecting a lot of money and depending on the company say you walk away from the truck and don't lock your bays and a couple cases go missing it's on you. Now every distributor is a tad different, because where I worked we were loaded by customer and the skids were shrink wrapped before going on the truck it would be hard for a case to just go missing from a skid that's fully shrink wrapped. However if your loaded by skew it's usually on you to count the beer before you leave the warehouse in the morning. Personally if you can go somewhere, where the trucks are loaded by customer and come off of an automated line you won't have to count anything before you leave the warehouse in the morning, all you want to do is make sure your stops are on the truck and you have all your kegs.

Anyhow you'll do 18-25 stops a day in a side loader it's a lot of get in the truck drive to the territory hit your first stop, make the delivery then get back into the truck drive it a total of 2 feet get out and make another delivery and you repeat that process about 25 times. When I worked for the beer company on Friday I literally had 4 stops where I never even moved the truck. It was all walking and running back and fourth the truck. Then drive half way around the block set the parking break and make another delivery. All in all the whole route may only be a few city blocks.

Lots of steps and steps with kegs. Lots of shady convenient stores that pass bad checks, because you the driver are also the bill collector and you have to collect money for 99% of the deliveries you do.

Personally as far as 2500-3000 cases a week, I have no way to verify that I suppose that depends on what beer your distributing, I worked for a Coors Light distributor and I was I figure 2300 cases a week it goes up and down.

Personally I do better now at GFS then at the beer company money wise. Like I said yeah it might all seem like female bikin clad bartenders, but they don't work at 9:00am on Tuesday morning when you'll be delivering.Now there was a girl who ran the bar at my last stop on Thursday her name was Avril she was 26-27 like me and she was an immigrant from Ireland and she was a real doll, and the guys who ran another bar out in Treemont that I went to they were pretty cool too I liked those guys they were good, now there were other bars and places that were not so cool, but 90% of the places were fine usually.

However the rest of it is angry grocery store receivers or shady C-Stores. Some C-Store owners are nice and others not so nice kind of depends you'll get jacked around by those guys a little bit. C-Stores trying to pass of counterfeit money or write you bad checks good times.

You'll have other A-holes too, there's one on my list I'm thinking of, but it's water over the bridge now.

Anyhow up here in the north the beer trucks made about $40,000 a year which is 30K a year less then Sysco, US or GFS. I hope I did a good job of explaining this whole thing.

 

There use to be like $300 base pay every week on top of cases sold.

 

Nice post, you outlined the job extremely well. And reinforced my opinion that I'll NEVER, EVER be a beer delivery guy! Thanks.

 

Why just not let your 40 year old son take care of himself?

 

Every time I drive by the Heinens warehouse in on Warnsville Center Road I think of you Pintlehook.