"Loaders" at dairy farms.

I've done the "loader/driver" thing for a couple of years and while it was okay, the ever-changing schedule each day made me get out of it and into the shuttling gig. But enough about me. Are there any dairy farms or milk hauling operation where there's a strict "loader" that hangs around at the farm and just loads tanks that get backed to the hose port?
I know WDT employed people like that who simply drove a company pickup around to different dairies and met with the drivers over at each one to get them loaded up. But then I guess some outfits wanted to cheapen it all and decided to have the driver's do both jobs, drive and load the product.

 

I guess I got burnt out with dispatch tossing 2-3 extra barns on top of the 3-4 I already had scheduled. 14-18 hour nights and a whole lot "bite the tongue". Only way I'd go back to it is if I was on one of those 18-20 hour, single barns that was 200-odd miles away. Made my own schedule up on that one. And it was also a single broker, as opposed to a co-op bureaucracy, that we dealt with. Now THAT was an easy set up.

Select and DFA co-ops are like "running the trains on time". That and I could be considered one of those "slow guys" that got clowned on. Hence the preference for 1-2 barns a night.

And if a particular company attached to a set of barns ends up being late and spilling milk, the co-op just simply finds another carrier and hopes for the best. The carrier that spilled has dairies eliminated and gets put into a sort of "doghouse" as punishment. At least down here.

 

That was what they used to do according to somebody I know that used to work there. From the standpoint of an alternative job, a strict loader running around in a pickup would be an excellent choice for someone down on their luck, CDL wise anyway. I'm not, in case anyone wondered.

 

I forgot about those operations where one trailer was used for multiple dairies. Still pretty intriguing to hear about.

Out here, it's not unheard of for most company driver-loaders with any given outfit to be thrown 4-6 barns a night. Anywhere between a 1 hour to 4 hour turnaround(drive time there and back, plus prep and pump time), and a full tank from each barn. And then most of these farms usually had 2-4, 7,000 gal silos that would each get filled within 3-5 hours.
Don't know the exact number of dairy farms in the west TX/eastern NM area, but shorthandedness, general fatigue, and finger pointing tends to run rampant with these factory farm ops out here. Couple that with lack of clean tank trailers, a barn running behind or ahead, or the one of the plants running slow, and it's a recipe for pandemonium

It's a rat race, that's for sure.

 

Firings and replacements got so common around here, it was usually bouncing back and forth between multiple companies every few years. Sometimes, a driver fired from a particular company would weasel their way back over to that same place after a couple of years due to a change in management.

Turnover is pretty heavy with most milk hauling outfits around here with the consistently changing schedules wearing people down. But on the other hand, drivers tending the whey protein and liquid feed are quite happy. Set schedule, same route, and not a whole lot of pressure. Coupled with higher pay and faster trucks, life is gold on that side of the food grade table out here.