Dot Foods Recent Info

It will still be controlled Chaos like any place with Food by the pallet and many docks.

The problem I think if anything is the failure to put a man at every dock capable of removing the inbound loads in 15 minutes with a forklift. The days of running a big warehouse or cold storage with a crew of 3 with 200 trucks coming has to stop.

 

In the old Blue Diamond Facility as well as a number of older Transloading Docks across Baltimore, they used to bring in Teenagers who got big enough and wanna earn a few dollars in those days up to the 60's at least. All they had to do is move boxes. Many of them across the place from one trailer to the next by hand. Many teenagers. It was a happy time so I hear.

Eventually some of them grew to 21 and became able to be hired on to drive for the company and others. By then they had gotten big and strong on the good food locally, decent money and worked off the beer and so on all day after school and sometimes after graduating.

Im talking a dozen maybe multiples of dozens of people. Make all that freight organized in a jiffy. No outside lumper BS or fees etc.

You would think many modern companies will just lighten up, (Francis...) loosen up a little bit and pay a few dollars for kids to come in and move food. Maybe toss a case of some favorite food to them as in kind payment, partly to help keep up their protein and partly to help them enjoy (Endure) the work better.

For myself today touching a cardboard box cracks my palms a little bit and I remember both the joy of a job finished as well as the pain that went along with moving 48000 pounds in 6 hours for 40 dollars before taxes.

And you wonder why I have nothing plus a broken skeleton. Part of that is my own fault, for being so stupid to work so hard for so little or free.

 

Whereabouts did you grow up? I lived in Milton for several years, drove for Reed.

 

This is info from an interview earlier this year. There are two driving jobs; one is no-touch between DC's, the other you do dock delivery and pickup, sometimes filling small orders from pallets and sometimes the whole truck goes one place and sometimes you are picking up orders for the company from suppliers to take back to the DC. Most places you unload, some do it themselves because of policy, you still get paid piece and pallet for those.

The active drivers go from the DC to local urban markets and do whatever of the above that they need to do, it's forced dispatch. They might use an active driver for no-touch or vice-versa, stuff needs to get done. I applied for no-touch and they immediately talked to me about being active (my word for it) which I actually preferred, but I didn't want to drive in the particular urban market that DC serves. If you are in DE you will likely do NYC, NJ, DC, start at oh dark thirty and run out your hours or make it back to go again. Everywhere, every nook with a 53 reefer and sleeper Volvo, no short trucks that I saw.

They are tough and thorough with hiring people, the interview is intensive and long, they will check your references with a privacy-invading third party, not in person. But they aren't trying to be a-holes, everyone was professional, not like ODFL's fake-nice. They want good temperament and judgement and high quality. Everyone you work with will have passed the same threshold so it's supposedly a great place to work.

The best time to get in is when they open a DC, they need new people. Otherwise the openings are only there to cover the low turnover.

 

Blades America, lol, gotcha.

Yeah, did a lot of Hunts Point and all the other buroughs, back hauled to DC and Baltimore mostly, wasn't bad at all and it was a great place to work. The President of the company, Blake Reed, is a really good guy too.