The Food Service Rant thread

Hi everyone! So I'm back in action and have decided to tell you all about my day. I didn't run my route today management offered me up a special management run today and I took it. It was an interesting day and not bad.

I was let go from Jury Duty Thursday at 11:00am before lunch got my papers and everything so I'm good for a couple 2-3 years on that. I am going to photo copy my paper work and give it to the bosses although they never asked for it. Anyhow they said we really could use you at work today and I said very well I'll be there even had like I said a special managers run.

So as you all are aware or some of you maybe aware the Cleveland Cavaliers are in the National Basketball Associations world series or "Finals" as they like to call it. The Caves got whooped out in California 2 games and then came back to Cleveland and beat Golden State by 30 points or so and now there looking to do it again so the city is a live with activity very busy down town right now. Seems I've been down town for every major thing there has been. We have a customer across the street from Quicken Loans arena and they get very busy with the Indians and Cavaliers. They buy a lot from us and Budweiser.

Anyhow I got up 2am this morning because my last stop on my first route was a trailer drop so my trailer had a route on it and then last stop I was just leaving the trailer at the customers and they wanted us there around 9am and I had to get everything off because they were the last stop. Anyhow left the yard about 3:15am got to my first stop at 3:30am actually the nice thing is there's no traffic that early get right in. First stop was 3600lbs took about an hour to do. Then went to the Children's Hospital got there about 4:30am they weren't quite ready for the days activities. Then a couple other restaurants we do and a police station and school district and Italian Bakery and then back to the yard and off to my last stop to drop my trailer.

Dropped my trailer not bad. Then because of the NBA Finals Cleveland's very busy a beehive of activity if you will. Were really trying real hard to be cool instead of "the mistake on the lake" as others from around the country used to refer to us as.

Anyhow NBA finals have caused the city to be busy and today we had all kinds of food service emergencies. Once I got back to the yard after dropping that trailer it was time to go do some food service emergency work. One of the managers ran down town then back to the yard and threw me the keys to the manager van. We had 3 vans running around all afternoon. Our regular van at our yard he was stuffed and then the van from Akron came up and I got to drive a van too!
Usually when you see the vans out that means there's some kind of food service emergency or special delivery.

That was me in the van had 3 stops today all down in "the flats" at the power house district did the big amphitheater right on the river and a couple other places right there in the same area.
What happened was the warehouse didn't have all the product in stock so it missed the big truck, but since we have our own chain of grocery stores (by the way were the only broad line food service company that has it's own chain of grocery stores which function as mini warehouses throughout the system) we were able to grab what the customers needed from the stores. That's why there was so much van activity. Anyhow spent the afternoon in the van doing a small mini route it wasn't van I kept getting in the van though and kicking for the clutch pedal and the van doesn't have a clutch pedal ha-ha!

 

Mack, I don't know how he actually worked around that mess all day. I remember one time, I was at a bar and the company I worked for a couple Kegs of Bluemoon and that was about all they would get from us maybe $600-$700 order. Cavalier would show up and have a $4,000 order to deliver there the kid would be going up and down the stairs constantly bring the fulls down and the empties back up.

Literally if you were in a trendy fancy hipster place like I did on Thursday you would leave the yard with a truck load of beer and literally come back to the yard with a back haul of empty kegs. I think the one day I came back with a full load of empty kegs.

In a side loader it's not that bad because a bay empties out and you can put empty kegs in the empty bay, but in a 16' box truck with a lift gate that has kegs double stacked on top of each other it's a whole different animal.

The back of there truck was a disaster every time I looked at it, they had shrink wrap balls of shrink wrap just thrown all over, all the fulls on one side and all the empties on another. They would be out side of the bar with a dozen kegs all empty normally they sent two guys, but I remember the one day they were short and the guy who was like the lead driver had to do it all on his own he was at the one bar for a very long time. He would take 2 kegs down and bring 3 empties up and just stage them all by the back of the truck and then load them on the lift gate and go up and down up and down.

Like I said side loader not so bad you can compartmentalize, but I don't know how those guys worked around all those empties and you know a 16' box truck filled to brim, you don't have a lot of room.

The funny thing is Cavalier and Premium Beverage Supply both had real similar fleets. That 16' box truck was the biggest truck in there fleet every other truck they had was a "cut away" Ford F-450 11 foot box truck or what ever they are. Now I would see Cavalier send one of there F-450's into that neighborhood, because the bigger truck was to full and had to many stops.

This was a stack I took down into one of the popular bars one Thursday.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is a very cheap beer and a lot of hipsters like to drink it because of it's low price it is a real value those 16oz Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans a very popular and my truck would be loaded with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans.


My first stop on a Thursday was usually a grocery store and they usually would take 3 bays. I would start early as I could to get to the grocery store first. One because I didn't want to miss there delivery window and 2 because I wanted to insure I had a parking place.

This was a typical set up on any given Thursday mine was the Coors Light truck there on the right. So that kind of gives you an idea of the neighborhood I was in.

Typical Friday out in Cleveland's Treemont Neighborhood. You just parked in the street everyone does.

 

First of all, A BIG THANK YOU to the op for this WONDERFUL thread! GREAT information... And to all drivers that do this kind of work and contribute to this thread...
I am OTR... have been OTR for almost 9 years now and don't know much anything other than OTR...

But have been considering doing something different to adjust to future changes in life. So, I'm trying to learn more about other types of truck driving jobs...
Read 10 pages of this thread... YOU GUYS ARE REAL PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS, REALLY HARD HARD WORKERS.. and you put up with A LOT OF CRAP AND HASSLE...
You do deserve every penny you get and MUCH MORE...
I would not do what you do even if I were paid $120,000.00 a year...
Guess I'll be looking into something else now...
Thanks again...

 

Come on Rocks live a little . I've never done OTR always thought it would be a fun adventure to do OTR, but I don't know not really digging it anymore it's not the going away from home that bothers me, it's all the politics of it all hours, loads, weights, DOT dispatchers and other non-sense that you OTR guys have to put up with.

Were on electronic logs, but were also 100 air mile radius of the yard or what ever it is so HOS aren't a big deal when your operating an out and back kind of thing.

It's funny because for me I would be a perfect OTR candidate not married, no kids no girl friend nothing like that I'd be perfect for OTR, yet never did it. Been out in the streets in the city from day1.

I figure your probably moving into property or getting married or kids or whatever it's none of my business, but like I always say there's lots you can do post office mail contractor, LTL line haul, garbage trucks, tow trucks, work for the city, if you have a passenger bus endorsement like I do you can work for your local major metropolitan transit authority as a bus driver. That job actually pays pretty good and it's like working for the railroad or air lines because you ride the bus sometime to a bus station and that's where you get your bus and drive your route. A friend of mine is the head safety man for one of the major bus transit authorities here in North East, Ohio he was also the safety man at a charter bus company as well.

Charter bus can be a big job and requires a lot of planning and tact on the drivers end if you want to do it right. I don't know if you have ever considered bus work? I know most guys don't like bus work and I have shied away from it my self it's a lot of responsibility.

With local transit bus authorities usually you can make good money lots of over time opportunities though.

 

Thank you thank you for the mindful info...
You are right about the "hassles" we OTR must put up with... what pssss me the most is the regulations, HOS + elog and parking...
But hey, you folks also have to deal with dispatchers and load planners, and loads and weights and DOT, don't you?

I have been very fortunate with the jobs I've done so far... And my actual company is great! Folks are extraordinary... including DSPs... We also have excellent safety score and great reputation with DOT... so they don't bother us...
I am a true loner... BTW, I am a female... originally from Brasil. No kids, no family, no home... But planning on buying real state in the future and may need to get out of OTR for a while... Besides, I am not very optimistic about the changes and the future in this industry... specially for OTR...
So far I have not learned enough to make a sounded decision... and it may take a while... I'm not in a hurry...
Don't think I would drive a bus though... I don't like being around people much...
Perhaps some dedicated account driving from coast to coast.... Or some regional... so I can still claim OTR experience just in case I want to go back to it... Don't know yet.... There's A LOT to learn and research...
Two friends of mine did some work for trucking staffing agencies... and had the opportunity to work with a variety of companies, doing several different kinds of work, with several different kinds of equipment, going to many kinds of customers and locations... They would choose when they wanted to work and were paid about $20.00 per hr + some extras... That got some of my interest... But not sure I would do the same though... Too early to tell...

 

Technically yes we have to deal with dispatchers and DOT and scales. However, it's not the exact same. When you run a set bunch of routes like I do and you for the most part know the deal you just grab your trailer and go. In the city and back road rural area's we really don't go over scales. Actually I've never driven a big truck through a weigh station. I don't technically have a dispatcher. I dispatch my self to tell you the truth ha-ha. Local is like that, you have a job to do you just do your job. I get to work in the morning start up my tractor find my trailer hook up take a look around and head out on the road.

When it's all done I come back in. I work out of a drop lot so I have to fuel my truck on my own which isn't a big deal I have my own Comdata card and I go where ever to get fuel. I have bosses, but usually there just there to manage stupid problems or call audibles or what ever foods different from LTL in a way because our job is to just get it off were not trying to get it off and then load it back up our bosses are not the exact same thing as a dispatcher I don't really think of the bosses at the yard as dispatchers. Pretty much get my paper work and stack of bills and that's my job for the day make it happen. Yes we absolutely could get pulled over by the DOT and we have however the company I work for used to have kind of a crappy CSA score, they've actually improved it quite a bit over the past couple years enough to where we don't really get flagged or anything. Were not on the DOTs radar.

We get back hauls, but there usually bread loads not a big deal on weight. I have a say in how I want my stops sequenced usually we talk about it try to make a route that makes sense 90% of the time everything is usually fine on that end. I don't really have to worry about truck stop parking or anything like that. Pretty much leave the yard and as long as you do your job your on your own we've had days where all the bosses were off didn't matter to me one iota I know what I have to do and how I have to do it I make it happen.

 

That's interesting... I see.. Your "load assignment" or your paperwork will say what you will be doing for the day... and you will figure out your route and calculate your hrs and fuel and all... Right?

In my company, our dispatchers don't baby sit us... they find loads (broker loads) and send us the load information, customers' addresses, pick up and delivery times (sometimes those are open within a window of time or FCFS) and a few details such as weight, kind of product, etc. But they don't bother us... they leave us alone... We do our own routing trying to match the miles given on the assignment and we plan our fuel stops (mostly at Pilots and FJs).
Most of my loads are broker loads. So, I have to call the broker and hear the same info from them and give them my info (name, company, truck and trailer numbers, etc, etc, etc...)
I always call customers (shippers and receivers) to double check info, schedule (or reschedule sometimes), parking conditions (if I need to park there overnight), etc.
And I always keep track of my hrs so I know what I can and can't do. Dispatcher can see my hrs in her computer but sometimes she calls me to know if I can pull a load before she confirms that with broker.

 

Yes the paper work has the invoices for all the stops and other information for the stops. I usually get fuel once a week and usually it's on Monday. I fill up on Monday and by Friday I'm down to a half a tank. Parking with us is a mixed bag sometimes were in the street other places we can pull in the lot. A lot of our stops don't have docks, but were much more prepared to handle all that as it is our business ha-ha! However what's nice is at the end of the day we just go back to our yard and don't have to worry about truck stops or rest areas.

Estes has a wild line haul that's kind of like over the road, but your just going from Estes terminal to Estes terminal you might have to pull doubles, but it's not the same as over the road your not going to be out forever and ever and ever. Might be out a week or two and then come back in. I think there wild line haul drivers drive sleepers, but they might drive day cabs as well and in that case you stay at a hotel over night.

 

So far, the only thing I like about this LTL is that you don't have to worry about finding parking for your break...
Do you drive the same truck every day or do you change trucks constantly?