My first year as a Dot Foods driver

Starting cpm is .36 now I think. Case count is .09 and line item is .22 which is all considerably more than when I started more than 2 years ago.

4 on 4 off may or may not be an option at all DCs, but if it is, it's 2 guys swapping a truck. One drives it while the other one is off, and if there isn't someone else that wants to do that schedule you can't do it until you find someone.

I've only heard of a very few Mt. Sterling drivers, fuel tanker drivers I think, that get home every day. I think a few Chicago drivers might get home every day. Company wide as a general rule, you don't get home every day.

I don't think we haul doubles out of all DCs, just one I think. It's out West, probably the Idaho DC, but I'm not sure. Whichever it is, they haul 53 foot doubles.

 

My rundown of the job at the start of this thread gives a great description of what the job is like. The delivery driver position is the most complex driver job; the others are less complicated and like any other driving job... you keep it between the lines, don't hit anything and show up on time. I know a few dudes from the Indianna DC. They wouldn't have anything to say different than I've already shared.

You'll go anywhere in a multi state area. Each DC takes care of it's territory, and from time to time you go from DC to DC. In my location, we cover 8 or 9 states for our deliveries and can go on runs all the way from the bottom of Louisianna to the top of Michigan once we get empty and pick up someone else's freight if we don't pick up product that goes back to one of our DCs. The experience will be much the same in any DC; the states will be the only thing that changes. In more than two years I'm still going to new delivery locations, so it's not so much a question of what sort of "runs" we have. Drivers are given loads based on location and hours available. There are probably 200 customers or more at our DC alone and you can get any one of them at any time.

After a while you could get some seniority and snag a dedicated delivery, which puts you going to the same customer on the same day every week, but the rest of your week will be different like any other week if you didn't have a dedicated. Dedicateds to go to the top people on the pole though, so they are hard to get, unless no one wants the delivery because it sucks so bad. It's a trade-off, you get predictability and you know how a part of your week will go but you have to put up with a crummy drop.

You can call the Indianna DC and speak to the transportation director there. They'll answer specific questions about the availability of 4 on 4 off and which states they deliver to. They'll give you the number of at least one driver that works from there too if you want to ask deeper questions from someone who actually does the job.