Family Dollar

I did both dollar tree and dollar general in Virginia working for Swift and it's serious tough labor but I did it at 58 yrs old and it'll either kill you or you'll be in the best shape of your life lol.Get a big arse fan and hang it on the door blowing into the trailer and raise your landing gear to help ease the carts out and drink plenty of fluids and you will see some pretty bad places so far as neighbor hoods where you shut down in the stores packing lot for a early morning delivery but I never did have any trouble and some places are downright tight to back into but google earth helps a lot.

 

Its been 4 yrs but after taxes and insurance I averaged bout 700 take home if I remember correctly.Miles are pretty good starting out the week with a 5 to 6 hundred mile run and a flat 100 dollar back haul and 15.00 unloads after the first stop you won't get rich but you'll be home every friday night for the weekend and head back out on Sunday afternoons.

 

OP take this man's advice. They have to beg people to do these Family Dollar runs for a reason...

Look into Sysco, MBM, Pepsi/Coke, go talk to your local beer distributors (Budwieser, Coors) while you're at it. You'll actually be compensated appropriately for the amount of work you're doing.

 

I third that opinion. If you like physical work, go into food service. You'll make a lot more money and have a better quality of life.
I did it for 1.5 years, till our parent company got rid of our union contract and basically wanted us to work for about 60% of what we were already making. They ended up closing the Chicago terminal. It's a young man's game and at 43, I wouldn't do it again.

 

I did dedicated MBM weekly turned out roughly 920 net after taxes feeding 4 particular resturants on a route that generally had me working three of the 7 work days. But keep in mind this essentially unloads the entire trailer in a day, then two more loads the following days. Not too difficult when you come up like I did, unloading reefers day and night. My base was out of Aberdeen Maryland and it was through FFE that gained me this dedicated route so they transferred me, truck, payroll, insurance etc everything over to them.

I moved on back into the FFE Fleets when one dispatcher told me she has had a specific Law that specifically authorizes her to implement me by orders to run more hours than existed in the log book after being consumed utterly within the DOT Rules. No one gets to tell me about something I already knew to be a trigger for a audit should I meekly comply and run over hours on her orders and a peice of paper that does not matter a whit 400 miles inside Connecticut.

Before you go running off to Join MBM, be warned.. that case of 120 pound Lobster is market rate that will be deducted from YOUR nice paycheck if someone steals it. (And they will not stop trying to steal from those trailers up there in the NE, yet another reason I stopped... I could not stand the liability nor wanted to in the first place. These people were truly parasites.)

 

And this is why I quit the food company. I worked for PFC on the Denny's account and when MBM offered us to either take a 40% pay cut or they were going to close the terminal...... We chose to close the terminal. I had a 5 day run that I did in 3, it was fun while it lasted.

 

ChicagoJohn, making threats to close a business or destroy same is not good business. It is a form of warfare called scorched earth to literally eliminate competition, particularly weak ones. How Klingon.

I think you made the right choice still. That 40% losses will close you in the future anyway.

 

Let me clarify, that was the companies offer. Take a 40% pay cut or they would close the terminal & warehouse. MBM had just lost the Bennigans account because they went out of business and they wanted us to work for the same rate they were paying drivers in NC.

There are lots and lots and lots of other trucking companies in Chicago, so I found an LTL job.

 

I do fd with jb hunt. If you are determined to do it, do it with hunt. I gross $1200 to $1350 a week off weekends. But I hate it, hunt is great to us but family dollar loads the trailers all screwed up, 40+lb boxes falling on you, 2nd deliveries crap in front of the first deliveries crap, walls of merchandise coming out at you as soon as you open the doors, tight delivery schedules, tight backing, ghetto's. It sucks man.