Truck Fleets the Back Bone of an Operation

I've never heard any thing good about them.

 

One of our drivers and I one day were out on a route and we saw a Sherwood Truck at Discount Drugmart (A totally cool chain that is indegenous to the Cleveland area) any how the one driver said to me "That's one company you do not want to bother working for."

 

We run doubles at night time I don't have a road bid, so I don't pull doubles usually night transit is a years of service thing (not all the time), but it is a thing where who ever has the most seniority wins first. In C-Town we don't have any open transit spots see GFS is different we don't really bid routes pretty much you get in and what ever route you end up with you end up with until someone quits then there routes go up for bid, that's how I got my new set of routes. This particular run was in the city it was local too our yard so I just grabbed one trailer, actually if the 50' trailer in our yard wasn't in use which it was I was going to grab that one. I thought about pulling doubles out there, but we can cram an awful lot into those 28' I know they don't look like much, but trust me by the time you get to the end of the day on one of those that's cubed out it's enough LOL! I had over 700 cases today and 16,000lbs 6,000lbs came off at the first stop back in the day with the tandem axle pups they used to load 30,000lbs in those old school tandem axle pups!



This was me running doubles on Christmas day 2015. I was at the warehouse grabbing a 50' trailer to go do a market place volume run which I like doing. I pulled this set of doubles from N.E.Ohio to Pittsburgh, PA area. Actually GFS has a lot of doubles in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio area.

We keep two different boards the transit/volume truck guys are on one board and the broad line delivery guys are on another.

This is my truck and return trailer at our warehouse over the July 4th weekend I was doing an internal transit move which is our 50' division we have two trailer sizes 28' and 50'. The 28' are pretty much the back bone of the company goes back to classic GFS History which will get into in a minute the 50' are only used for specific jobs. Broad line division does not run routes in the 50' trailers for one they won't even work at half of our stops the company just uses them more for internal business and chain restaurant accounts, or big one drops at places with loading docks and stuff, but there aren't guys running 20 stop broad line routes in them and the older ones are not really even set up to run routes. Meaning no ramp or anything and typically any food operation that uses the big trailers i.e. 48' has side doors like if you look at McLane and Mains especially Mains a lot of there cooler and freezer comes out of the side and really for broad line the big trailers don't really work that good not that I think which is why like Sysco and US Foods both have a lot of pups and 33-36' trailers because anything bigger for mom and pop places isn't really efficient.

The chain system places use the big trailers because if you have 700 cases coming off at Olive Garden then that's one thing, but to go to a place that's only getting 9 cases it's a little much. Like McLane around here unloads the Applebee's out the side and Mattingly and GFS and all the big chains all unload out the side the lot at these places are not big enough to really back the trailer up to the back door I'm mean I'm sure there's some places you can do that, but for the most part any chain operation is run out of the side:

http://www.hankstruckpictures.com/p...7/mattingly_foods_2-5-08_indianapolis_in.html

The job I did last night was just a local and when it comes to local stuff the doubles aren't really utalized for that, what they do with the doubles is warehouse-drop yard and drop yard to warehouse and that's about that. We do not really do a lot of trailer drop offs at customers and I've not known of them to say go pull doubles out of the yard drop trailer XYZ at stop whereever and then go run your route and come back and pick up the converter dolly when your done. I'm not saying that's never happened, but I really really do not thing that is common practice. The double are road things, once they get to the yard the sets are broken apart and then everything that has to happen in the city is all singles. GFS has a lot of 28' trailers if you google map our warehouse in Springfield, Ohio the yard is just a sea of 28' trailers the 50' primary use is big one shot drops with loading docks, chain restaurants that get 200-300 cases at a time and even then we do have some 2-3 day chain restaurant over night runs that go out with a single 28' trailer believe it or not. Aberdeen, Maryland does have some goofy rented equipment from Pensky that is not indigenous at all to the GFS fleet.

Here's a history lesson in the late 1960's the company decided
to pull doubles and use a drop lot system figured they can cover more ground out of one warehouse. Still doing that to this day and were the originators of that Sysco and US Foods to a lesser extent are a bunch of copy cats GFS was doing doubles first actually Sysco and US Foods were not even in existance when GFS started doing doubles GFS is older then both those companies actually people forget US Foods is not that old and in the scheme of food service trucking has not really been around all that long it's roots that go back to way back when but US Foods US Food Service the company is only all of 16-20 years old. We actually are the largest food service interstate doubles operation in the country we probably rival in terms of night time doubles runs any decent busy regional LTL company that uses doubles.

This is my really classic 1986 GFS set of doubles I paid good money for that set there kind of collectors items, but 1/64th scale trucks is a whole other topic of conversation LOL!




If you look you can see our doubles set up and our road line already to go this picture is a tad older, but a good photo that truck is an old school 2004 drop axle Volvo GFS used drop axle trucks for many many years. However 2006-2007 they started phasing out the drop axles and going over to twin screws.

Anyhow I hope that answered your question about our doubles.

The run I was on last night was a local run in our yards service teritory and for stuff like that, that's local we just do singles. If they needed another trailer I would have ran back to the yard and got them one. I thought about pulling doubles out there, but that probably would not have been warranted and it's not real common company practice not that it's against the rules, but it's not something we really do for situations like that. It's usually for anything local it's take a single trailer out there and start with that.

The doubles are just like I said line haul stuff once in the city we really do not do doubles in the city.

 

They built the DC in Kenosha it's 1/2 way between Chicago and Milwaukee so they can do both cities out of that DC, that's where our doubles operation comes into play.