What's it like to do 2-3 days foodservice deliveries?

Sleep in hotels doing food service. Lol.
You put yourself in the sleeper berth on your
Log book.
Then you climb in the back of the truck and
Unload freight.
Then you nap in between stops,fully dressed
And miserable.

If it's your turn to drive,then you drive tired
And miserable, while your partner gets his
30 minute nap in between stops.

There is no time for a motel,
There is no 10 hour break,
There's very little sleep.

You get all that after the trailer is empty.
Then rush back and get another one.

 

When I ran for Darden out of Aberdeen tied to FFE under a form of dedicated rates favorable to both parties, I had 4 red lobster resturants in NJ and Connecticut. Three on Saturday and one on Sunday and return empty.

These were very big million annual dollar resturants so they took in big orders, pallets piled to the ceiling. Marketrate lobsters, beefsteaks and seafood and piles of that biscut and so on.

Get going 3 am, inspect trailer. Temp, paperwork, get let out after hooking via manager at Darden property. Gather toll money for 95 and get going. Asap.

At sunrise I am catty cornered at my first resturant near I-80-78 area. A few hours stuff goes in the place everything manually checked against that list. Any shorts is charged out of my 1000 dollar salary each weekend. So 500 a day gross give or take. I already had a huge breakfast at the Petro above Aberdeen so been active since midnight that morning.

Anyway.

Put everything away. Close up the truck. Fight to Lobster two. catty corner there repeat. That takes a few hours.

This time it's a bit after noon. Grab a small meal. Just a little one. Number three knows when I am on the way. They are waiting.

When I get there unpack everything, set up the truck and unload until I hit the pallets containing sunday's lobster delivery, that one takes 1/3 of the entire trailer. Lobster three chef starts working on my dinner, a massive formal 1000 mile dinner for me in a far corner table with essentialy the entire staff helping serve it and bill me.

I get a little bit of sleep when I reach connecticut.

Now here is the problem. 5 PM Connecticut Darien Rest area with the Mc Donalds. Red Lobster owner finds his food short. Comes find me using the qualcomm on my truck. Hammers on my door and says PLEASE!?

Great ok, let's get rid of this. This time I am wobbly, weak knees and cranky.

Food is delivered. Or tossed through his door rather. Human chain of staff. Big time place. Huge amounts of food. All of which has to be accurate down to the last box against the master list.

Stumble off to the truck hit the 76 in Brandford and pass out.

Trailer has to be back to Darden sunday.

Stagger to counter, slosh a gallon of coffee hot and boiling into three stanley thermos. Staff recognizes I am gotta go. So they load me up with food in the go boxes. Get a 20 dollar tip for their effort.

Fight the 95 problem all the way back sometime after sunrise. Turn in trailer, turn in paperwork get yelled at as customary for one sin or another... jump in the bobtail and go home somewhere in Maryland far from Aberdeen. Grab full fuel along the way.

Pass out. ZSleep 3 days, party until midnight saturday stumble off to the 76 or Petro grabbing fuel to repeat the weekend of pain.

Close to 4000 dollars a month income. Did that for a while. Pretty profitable. But the Connecticut owner of the Lobster can very well find someone else to abuse with his precious sunday food delivered on saturday night. God knows those yankees eat too much up there.

There is one more thing about Jersey. Thieves. They know #### well what those 10 foot MBM letters say.

Lobster, Seafood. Premium meats. Steal me.

So a few knots on the skulls along the way. They know they got caught and usually flee from fear and ow. I was a lion then, if they took 600 dollars in lobster I work for less than free that whole weekend so its MY lobster, apply knots until they stop that.

 

If you have a co-driver, yes, that is how it works. Dominos and Papa Johns are two that run like that.

If you have a day cab(like the one in my profile picture), then you get a hotel(company paid) Gordon feels we should be well rested. We don't stay in cheap hotels. I was running a overnight to WV at the beginning of the week and then a 2 day route out to eastern PA/NJ/NY and the end of the week. Right now I am on 2 overnight routes(Monday/Tuesday-Thursday/Friday) due to a lot of my customers being closed on my route.

BTW, the picture was taken at the hotel i Stay in in NJ.

 

I was in Sacramento and it was easy

 

I’ve been doing that for 15 years. Just myself, I never take a helper or codriver. Leave at one in the morning, deliver about seven stops, I have a dedicated route so I have the same place to park every week. Do my 10 hours, wake up and do the next four stops and I am home around noon. I am on the road for about 36 hours. Most of our drivers do that twice a week. And the vast majority run by themselves.We run 100% freightliner Cascadia’s. Nothing older than four years old. The sleeper is small, but unless you’re an enormous guy you have enough room to put all your stuff. For the guys who take a helper, we have a larger size truck with the two bunks they use for their shut down

 

Sums it up pretty good imo. We ran teams from Binghamton to NYC with 48s cubed out loaded to the hilt. One guy drives down and the other naps. You both work the truck the whole time and the other drives back. Avg run was 24hrs. Did 3 a week so you had 24+ hrs off between runs and i had Fri night to sunday 5pm off. Money wasn't the best but it was my 1st job. Usually a hair over 1000 take home