What can a rookie in food service expect to make in their first year?

I made $74K my first year.

 

Did they used to have more then one of the 33'? I swear I used to see the 33' trailers for McLane more often. I do see it doing some stops down town and stuff.

Also I saw a McLane straight truck a few weeks ago on I-77 it must be for shorts or extras.

 

$74,000 is EXCELLENT money!

God bless every American and their families! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

Not for doing food service and I'm not trying to sound like a whiney ungrateful brat

 

We only have one 33'. It used to go to the zoo and airport, but I don't think there's anything there anymore. And tower city . There's a place in Parma, I think, that we can get a big trailer in but not out. It doesn't go out very heavy with the normal stops on the route, so it gets extra stops all the time.

We do have a straight truck, but I don't know that it ever goes to Cleveland. The one you saw was probably from Cincinatti.

 

When I watch some of the broadline food service guys I think I got it pretty easy, as far as food service goes. I pretty much go down the ramp and into the store. Sometimes the end of the ramp is actually in the building. We do some malls that involve some walking, but that's about as hard as it gets.

I made just shy of 84k last year, doing my two relatively easy overnight routes. And whatever kind of super easy extra work I felt like picking up, like 2-3 stop overflow routes that might go 500+ miles and pay $400-450.

 

To start at Sysco I was on call, so I never slept well dreading a 3am work call. Next up, you get to work and get your load sheet for the day, it was typically 10 to 16 hours planned, sometimes more. No directions, just addresses. No information as to where to go when you got there. (restaurants were easy, hospitals, schools, not so much). The cases were never sorted for you, for example stops 1-4 were all mixed on the closest skid to the back door and you may need only one case for stop one and it may be at the bottom. I never took a break and I really never had time to take one, management would watch you without your knowledge and then randomly show up at stops and ask you safe unloading techniques, smith system questions, etc. Customers yelling at you for coming during lunch, waiting 15 minutes for customers to write checks, and yet other customers wanting a discount because a box had a ding in it. To top it off if I got done early I may have a backhaul.

Some may calling it whining, I just call it the truth. The mental stress was to much for me, but to each his/her own, some people like it and have an easier route that they have been on for years and know the customers and love it. They get fed and enjoy the interaction. For me the 68k was not worth it, hell a 100k wouldn't be enough for me to go back.

 

GFS.
It was a different time though when I started. When I started local management was in turmoil so to speak and our Disabled List was 10 miles long and everybody and there brother was hurt and unavailable to work and they had all kids of routes wide open and there was no extra board and I came in and 1-2-3 I was running routes.

We were also getting ready to switch loading warehouses and that also affected some of it.

Fast forward a couple years management has smoothed out it's issues. We now have an extra board with 3 people on it who knows when there will be routes for them we only have one person on the DL.

Every local management area at GFS is different.

At the time I had an ugly heavy Tuesday and a real ugly and heavy Friday in the summer.

Anyhow, besides all that stops and routes and stuff were switched around and reworked some stops came and went.

I was also doing some back hauls and had some 13 hour days scattered in there as well as picking up some extra runs and other things. Some of that has slowed down now I hardly ever am dispatched to do backhauls and our transportation division leadership has changed and there's now an overabundance of road drivers so extra road runs i.e. volume truck and doubles almost never come up any more for route guys to do.

However, I don't know how much that matters considering I am no longer at the bottom of the barrel base level pay wise and also I've switched routes since then to a heavier route LOL! and so now I'm making more per week, but I've also gone on trips and traveled for work I've spent 2 weeks and a couple days this year living out of a suit case and it was fine I was happy to do it. Spent a week in Maryland and then sling shotted between Cleveland and Pittsburgh to for a while as well.

See I work in a new division your Illinois which means your Kennosha that division is not new it's been around for a few years now I don't really see very much hiring in Illinois for GFS once in a while, but I can't say that's an area that comes up to often. There pretty well established out there by now I know Kennosha is on two shifts so that means there busy.