Working for Wal-Mart: A Review

Yeah $275 bonus in addition to your normal pay. It's an easy $500-$600+ day you only need 6 hours minimum left on your 70 to take advantage of it. I've been done in 3-4-5 hours on extension day and then there's times I might run my full set run on more hours and make $800+ on it.

 

Another week, another fine paycheck.

Really finding my groove here. Being older, I guess it takes me a bit longer to get acclimated to schedules. But it’s coming along just fine.
Still running the extra board with a FLW gate time at 1300 Saturday. By Wednesday, I’m usually done by 2100-2200. Been getting a single truck to drive each week….no swapping in five days. I think I’ve gained a bit of a reputation for leaving the units cleaner than I got them…last three weeks I’ve been driving units from the top seven in seniority there. Maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there, but I’m pretty pleased nonetheless.

Had a little bit of a soft week two weeks ago…lots of waiting. But my lowest check here was better than my best week at any other company. This truly has been the best professional move I’ve ever made. Owning my own truck served a perfect purpose at the perfect time. But landing this position at WM is comparable.

Safe travels to all!

 

Longer you're here the better it gets. There's nothing like it in trucking.

 

It makes me laugh reading the WM Drivers FB page comments. Sometimes I wonder if we’re driving for the same company. And while I understand there are differences between DCs, I still can’t understand the amount of moaning and griping.

 

What's funny is they ain't leaving... The bad we deal with here is relatively speaking almost quaint compared to what nonsense drivers put up with on a daily basis elsewhere. That's not to make light of the warts we have but compared to elsewhere, yeah...

I would encourage you to compete every year in your DC's TDC (Truck Driver Championship). It's a lot of fun. I went to the state competition and the company regional competition last year. Headed to state competition again this year.

 

Do you guys get to somewhat pick your start times? Or is all based on seniority?

 

Yes you pick, it is seniority based but it's not like gate times are limited. But you might have to compromise to get some gate times. 8am seems to be popular with more senior drivers at my DC so you won't get an assigned truck on that gate time and possibly not even a 5-2 5-3 on 8am but maybe as an extra you could, maybe. Whereas some gate times you might luck into an assigned truck right off the get go.

If you want to work days or nights you can do either as a newb. If you want nightshift premium that's 16:00 or later. The more flexible you can be the more likely you can get yourself into a 5-2 5-3 program or even an assigned truck - like if you want dayshift assigned truck pick any/all spots for that between 8am-12noon in the order you would prefer and see what happens.

 

Not to make it complicated but every DC does these things differently. Like at mine we have gate times that start at 8am all the way up to 8pm. And no gate times from 9pm to 7am. But we also don't have any 9am, 11am or 15:00. That could change at rebid they might add new gate times and take some away or they might make no changes. We used to have some midnight, 1am and 2am's but not anymore. Depends on the needs of the business and if they're covering things good or not.

Then you have GM DC's i guess they have gate times all around the clock but don't really know. GM drivers run regionally too sort of like an LTL extra driver that runs wild. Grocery drivers are what they call captured capacity, that is the grocery drivers run out and back from their specific DC only, they dont run wild in the whole region.

Probably too much info to process i tried to not complicate it. What gate time(s) would you prefer? What DC are you looking at?

 

I would prefer a 8-9 am gate time. Hermiston,OR

 

We don't have many regular posters here that work for Walmart besides me and 2 or maybe 3 others. I don't know anyone from that DC. Hopefully if somebody here knows something about their gate times maybe they will post.