Delivery driver

Doing what? Hauling what?

 

You go somewhere and then other places until you have nowhere else and go home.

 

depends on where one works.

depends on what one delivers.

depends on whether or not one survives the day and is not taken to the morgue.

 

Like delivering pizza? Well you go to work stick the sign on your car and then you just wait for people to order pizza... Then when they do you go to their house and hope its a #### home alone but turns out to be 2 bros... You ask for a tip and he just winks at you... so then you go back to the store tipless and then you go on to your next delivery... thats about the full day of a pizza delivery driver... Was that what you was wanting to know?

 

Wake up about 0830
Drive to terminal
Get my bills from dispatch
Pre-trip tractor & trailer, hook and go
Drive about 30 minutes to my route area and deliver anywhere from 7-10 stops and then maybe 7-10 pickups depending on how the deliveries go
Somewhere get a lunch in there
Drive back, dock the trailer, post-trip, return bills to dispatch window
Fuel truck if needed
Drive home
Crack open a cold one (or 2 or 3)

 

You forgot to mention that some places have just enough room for a horse wagon, but somehow we have to fit in there as well.

 

Well I get up early 2,3 or 4am doesn't matter, check voice mail.

Put uniform on.
Drag my self down stairs.
Drive to truck yard.
Grab Scanner and log in for the day.
Go drive to part of yard where we park trucks.
Hunt for my trailer.
Go to my tractor and hook up to trailer. Take look at everything.
Do bureaucratic non-sense that elog machine makes me do.
Shuffle Paper Work.
Pull out of yard.
Drive to first stop.
Unload Cooler, Dry and Frozen.
Drive to second stop.
Unload Cooler, Dry and Frozen.
Drive to Third Stop
Unload Cooler, Dry and Frozen.
on and on it goes until trailer is empty.
Drive back to yard.
Sometimes I build a set of doubles sometimes I don't.
Unhook trailer.
Do end of day prompts on hand held.
Park Truck and secure it for the night.
Get in car and drive up to office.
Go in office.
Hang up and return equipment I may have needed for the day.
Go on computer.
Do end of day driver and route check in.
Submit end of day check in.
Check out route for tomorrow.
Log off of elog.
Put elog back in holder.
#### Chat with whoever else is there.
Get in car and go home.

 

It depends on what you are delivering.

With MBM and Darden out of Aberdeen the day started roughly at 3AM. checking the trailer number with the Yard Boss to be sure you got the right one going to 4 redlobsters around the Jersey and Connecticut areas from Maryland.

Hope you have your coffee and breakfast squared away, it will be a while before you can get a break.

Towards 8 am at the first red lobster, shoehorn the whole rig into the catty corner where it's not really supposed to go. Deploy the rollers to side door of trailer and to restaurant door. Muster the restaurant crew.

Start working on a custom built pallet to order for that particular place against a large fat spreadsheet a few inches thick. Check off what you put on the rollers. Hope you are fit, some of that Lobster and Beef approach 120 pounds a box. THUMP. God I was something else in those days. Until the spine quit...

Finish that stop, wrap everything up and get moving towards the next stop. WITHOUT STOPPING. You have to know exactly where you are going to stops two through four. Never stopping. Why? The minute you stop say 2 minutes you have a thief or two working into the trailer to grab what they can. It's hard not to miss a 7 foot block letters MBM seafood etc.

That tire thumper has a few skulls on it. So a little street fighting is a possibility. Why? Whatever stuff you come up short on and the red lobster did not get gets charged back to you market rate against your pay. In fact if the whole trailer should vanish, legally you are responsible for the total value of the load. Personally.

Your work spans about two days flat. You are finished on the evening of the second day. That is the time to hoist your broken body into the sleeper and stay there for a half day. Since you were assigned a route and not expect to run it again for 4 more days you can sit there for all they care. Just be back in Aberdeen 3 AM for the new trailer load going out ready to work.

Just one quibble. We had a dispatcher who was full of herself sprouting BS such as vested extra hours on Daily total on duty should you have broken your total 14 hours or whatever it was. You are told you get two more hours.

If you follow the green DOT regulations you will find that it's not so. Airhead does not realize that is reserved for very unique situations in which your day's work has been disrupted by a extraordinary event or problem. And only enough to get to a haven. Otherwise it is a violation.

Thats about it for one of my local work. MBM and Darden no longer exists. But Red Lobster does. God only knows who supplies their food to this day. But it's not me. And I hope dispatcher airhead no longer screeches about people who refuses to do her bidding. I hate to be difficult. But that kind of work has it's challenges. And time is always short, you are late, get going. You have a owner of 4 million dollar plus restaurants short on food for saturday night to feed a few hundred each of the places waiting on you. Get going.

 

Love those LTL P&D banker hours. I’m jealous!