Lumpers/food distribution places

Lumpers. Snotty little troll like ####s. Right?

These guy don't actually work for the place you're dropping at. The location hires private lumper companies (like Pinnacle) that charge us to unload and give a percentage to the facility they work at.

Whenever the breakdown isn't to high and insurance allows. I unload my own #### because my broker pays for that and that's extra cash in my jeans for a few hours of work.

I have been to Wal-Mart Dist and was in and out in 40min no BS.

I've been to Fry's Grocery Dist over by Phoenix and came 18hrs short of a 34.
It's like all high schoolers working there.

It's all about logistics. Your load belongs in a certain place at a certain time in a certain order which is apart of one grand system to get product from A to B.

Uneducated or Burnt out employees, someone quitting or calling in sick or late drivers with work ins and reschedules effect the grand system in more ways than I care to mention.

This is the Industry. There is much more to it but in a nutshell...... Yea.....

 

Always seemed like a heck of a lucrative business to me with what some of these places charge ...

If only they could all be like Costco we'd have it made.

 

God bless Costco. Winco? Not so much. I was once charged a $731 lumper fee at the dist in Woodburn OR.

 

Wow ... That's the highest I've ever heard ... How do you even get the customer or broker whoever is paying you to believe it's that much extra ... So ridiculous.

 

All the big meat producers just tell the carrier to add-on the lumper charge to the freight bill, whatever it is. They don't balk at anything hardly, but know when something is out of line. They've come to accept this as part of the business in selling to large grocers.

 

Cost of unloading and breaking down 60 different products into 167 pallets. No wonder these dist centers contract with lumpers.

 

Because it is NOT their stuff until they sign for it. Until then it belongs to the shipper, and you have agreed to transport it to the destination. Lumpers insulate the grocery warehouses, from having to accept product they don't want, as no employee has touched the freight.

 

I pull reefer when I do truck, and have not fingerprinted any product in over 8 years and never will except in the rare case of off-loading some damaged product somewhere.

If my carrier doesn't care how much the lumper is, why should I? I'm too old for that crap anymore and just don't need the aggravation. Seems like you can get the stuff off and counted faster when you let the lumpers handle it as opposed to the private carrier haulers who do their own unloading. But to each their own. I understand the sentiment of the poster but it is what it is and it is one of the last few bastions where unions still have a strong hold.

Plus, it's that much less OTJ injury liability for the grocery chain.

But I think it's a tit for tat thing. The shippers can't/won't break every SKU down onto individual pallets, and on pallet sizes like the grocers want it, and the grocers don't want to deal with excess damaged groceries due to loading to meet grocer's wants.