Are Drom's Still Used In the Baking Business on the West Coast?

Yeah, these days Franz is using more straight 53's and also sets. I haven't paid enough attention to them to be sure, but I think they use 32's like we do, as opposed to the more standard 28's, but I could be wrong.

 

You don't see too many of those cabovers anymore, at least not in my area. All the bread companies for the most part use day cab single screws and some twin. NE Foods, which owns H&S and Schmidt, even use CNG tractors now. But when it comes to market domination, Bimbo is it. They're the best company to work for as far as pay and bennies.

 

I'm sure a lot of you are wondering why a company would call themselves Bimbo. It might bring up some dirty images or laughs, and I heard rumors about how the name got started, which had something to do with daughter's. But to clarify any misconceptions about how they got their name, here is the history straight from Wikipedia....

" The company Grupo Bimbo was started in Mexico in 1945 by Lorenzo Servitje, Roberto Servitje, José T. Mata, Jaime Sendra, Jaime Jorba and Alfonso Velasco. Over fifteen years, under the leadership of Daniel Servitje, current Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Group, it has established itself as a global bakery company, reporting an increase in sales of USD 4.67 billion in 2004 to USD 10.712 billion, in 2011.

The name Bimbo was first coined in 1945. The main hypothesis is that it resulted from the combination of Bingo and Bambi. Later, the founders would know that children in Italian are called bimbo, while in Hungarian, the word means cocoon and, curiously, the phoneme used in China to name it, sounds very similar to bread.

The corporate mascot, a small polar bear, resulted from the drawing that came to Mr. Jaime Jorba in a Christmas card, and whom Anita Mata, wife of Jaime Sendra, dressed with a white apron and a chef’s hat, given a loaf of bread under his arm.

The Bimbo trademark was recognized as “famous” by the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property on April 23, 2010[9] and is one of the 27 selected brands that have reached this category in the country. In 2014, the Brand Footprint by Kantar World Panelpositioned it in seventh place in the food industry in the world.

The first products launched into the market were cellophane-wrapped large and small white loaves of bread, rye bread and toasted bread. By late 1948, there were nine Bimbo products on the market. The line was expanded in 1952 with the production of the Donas del Osito (Bear Cub Doughnuts) started, along with a new line of buns: Bimbollos, Medias Noches and Colchones. "

 

I still miss doing my 50,000 pound loads of whole wheat flour for Bimbo Bakery in Beaverton Oregon. Was a nice gig. I would make 3 runs from Spokane to Beverton in 6 days. Started on sunday finished friday afternoon with 2100 miles in around 65 hours. Normally took about 4 hours to load myself out of a rail car and 2 hours to unload at the bakery. Did that most of the summer of 2015.

 

Just to clarify Mike, Entehmanns may still have their own trucks, but they are still owned by Bimbo. As I mentioned in your UTZ thread, they do hire owner operators as distributors for Bimbo products, and they got sued as a result of that for misclassification of job title.

The Bakery jobs around my area aren't the highest paid jobs, especially if you work for NE Foods, but like I mentioned before, Bimbo drivers make WELL over $80k, and fully paid benefits and pension. I'm sure @rabbiporkchop can attest to that. They're one of the best jobs out there.

 

I have never seen one in the grocery business at all on the lower right coast here I definitely would remember it.

 

The union guys that work directly for Bimbo do very well for themselves but there is a lot of theft at the non-union depots, which leads me to believe those other guys aren't doing so well as independent contractors

 

Yeah, them Stroehman drivers made #### good money. They had it lot easier than we did, all drop and hook, whereas we had to physically unload and reload our trailers.

I know Stroehman drivers got serverance pay and we're allowed to take two loafs of bread a day, did that transfer over to your contract when Grocery Haulers took over?