Working for Wal-Mart: A Review

Also when hiring on you just get shoehorned into whatever slots are available. But it's temporary. And they might ask if you prefer days or nights. Might not too, just depends on the needs there. You'll also see time slots get posted throught the year that you can sign up for. But we all do our rebid every February.

 

Good info Rollin coal. Before retiring I was a GM driver and day out and start times were the same as you describe., you pick day out and start time according to seniority. They opened a grocery DC a 100 miles away so we'd pull a grocery load if in the area, so we had the best of both worlds. We did mostly dry van loads then went back to our home DC but reefer trailers had to go back to the grocery DC when empty as the grocery DC got tired of losing them at our yard. GM drivers used to pick up more backhauls than grocery guys too.

 

Thanks, I wish there were more fleet drivers adding to the conversation here, including retired drivers like yourself. It just helps drivers maybe thinking about coming here to kind of get a feel for how things are. You mentioned that you helped out with groceries now and then. That's how it is over this way.

We have GM drivers from other regional DC's that they call "flow thrus" who come in here on an "as needed basis" and help out with a load or two. It's a good thing those drivers do that otherwise they'd have to farm extra work out to contract carriers. At my DC no contract carriers ever come in here to help out with store deliveries. At other DC's sometimes they do.

It's a lot easier for a new hire to gain seniority quicker at a perishable only grocery DC. The old timers tend to be more concentrated at the GM DC's.

I know drivers at a handful of DC's east of the Mississippi River but not out west and don't have a clue about anything out there. I know some drivers who have transferred from out west I can ask about Hermiston.

 

Seems like walmart is still hiring drivers at a lot of terminals? Why is the high turnover rate persisting?

walmart had Qualcomm. Then they went to peoplenet. Are they still running the peoplenet system in their tractors?

 

Growth. The turnover isnt high. Only a fraction of typical OTR companies it's inline with LTL turnover which is single digit percentage versus OTR near 100%. When I was hired in 2023 they had 12,000 drivers now they have about 16,000. But people retire, quit, get fired all the time, it's a big company, there's always going to be some of that. No on the people net. I think it's called intransit. I dunno it's pretty simple easy to use. Interesting fact on walmart turnover. People who try to hire on and fail the initial onboarding process count towards turnover and they never actually hauled a single load.

 

WM is trying to replace many of the third party carriers. They want more of their own trucks hauling their freight