Sysco New Branfuels,Tx

Hopefully somebody will be billing somebody some serious detention. It especially sucks when this happens and you have ample hours to be running but you're being held prisoner.

 

I won't deal with sysco at all, delivered to Jersey city one time took 7 hrs to unload a straight run of flour on skids, bunch of lazy mfers

 

You can tell immediately when you walk into the "lumper office area" at a Sysco (formerly the driver's lounge) that you're in for a long wait. Nothing but a bunch of guys pretending to be "working", but only as slow as molasses in January, and not a gram of efficiency or urgency to be found anywhere. Sysco, to me, seems to be overrun with this mentality in their lumper people, no matter where you go. It's bizarre and it's disgusting. Problem seems to be nobody is in charge over anybody. Everybody is has equal responsibility for nothing and to no one. They just want to get their $200 cut. Once they reach that, they could care less about anything else for that day, and since there is nobody there to keep them moving effectively, most drivers just wait and wait.

But other lumper places can be good and efficient. But with any Sysco, the odds are really good this will not be the case.

 

There is only one Sysco that I will defend which was pretty good, that of Pokomoke City Maryland out on the tidewater near the ocean halfway between Ocean City US 50 and the Norfolk Bay/Ocean bridge-tunnel crossing which is about 20 miles of open waters provided the winds and weather permits according to your weights.

They have a small forest you pull into the night before and wait on the property for your 7 am appt or whatever, when called you dock and they unload you pretty fast.

It's pretty much the only sysco I will defend as a good one from my time. Even though our old businesses growing up sourced from various vendors of food over the years when those businesses were sold off into retirement we continued to source some food for the house from that particular sysco when part of my family lived in the area. (That's one thing I never told dispatchers at all. It's a option to park and be able to take time off in a part of the USA where there is simply no place to put a semi. They think I am on time off (And i am or was) for a week. Im good for another 6 months after. The sea has been very good to me over the years.

The only other sysco I would get into would be near Horseheads NY, Elimira area. Only because the one shipper we handled there was McCormick and Co Spices (The occasionally really expensive name brand spices in your grocery store, most of which is sourced world wide) and when it's time to unload before the days of computers and scanners etc it would expect to take half a day to be back in that trailer moving 6000 little tiny cases or boxes, each with two seperate numbers to check off against a large spreadsheet from printer the old way. The reason I liked this one is beacuase I get halfway into the trailer, they send 5 more people to empty it rather quickly for the afternoon. I was a reefer and its not a reefer load specifically but would run the reefer to cool their dock on hot days to help out a little bit. (Nothing that would be worth trouble with a few gallons of fuel spent back then)

Texas Syscos as described with lumper third party companies or whatever the heck they call themselves (It's other grocery outfits too such as Associated, Meijers (These were union on the back row of docks, they unloaded you back half of facility if the customer paid good money for that otherwise you are it on the front non union half and I had made sure to have been banned from the one in Detroit for several decades until we delivered a special they unload trailer in 2000. They unloaded us too. We were expecting trouble because of my past but it's water under the bridge to them apparently. Nothing had changed in there.)

I don't know to this day why or how a trucking company can accept or somehow allow 300 dollars or more to be paid for a lumper to unload now when the most any would have paid in our time was a hundred or so denpending on what was in it. That led to asking employers to see if they have walmart DC drop hook ability (As one arkansas employer did) so we can go to the one near Waco, drop hook and be gone in 15 minutes while 100 truck waited around us in the hills for a live unload back then.

Eventually we just stopped hauling freight that involved live lumping or unloading/loading and waiting times. Hauling medicines, it's forklifted out of that trailer in 20 minutes or less and reloaded back to Memphis for Carboard waste in bales or in the case of 9-11 reloaded to the max with bulk narcotics for Linfield CT distribution for all those people in need of it from the Detriot facility. Most of the McKesson DC's had always kept a certain percentage of all medicines on hand (Not too long, some were perishable)

But I digress. I worked hard to stay topic on Sysco and associated lumping type problems with that. (Parasites)

I totally and absolutely am convinced that in some syscos like the one in Albany, it was easier to have a ex convict who was released not long before and starting over from nothing 60 bucks to unload me in 2 hours knowing he will be unloading 5 or more trailers that day there all cash for himself. What I do not know at that time is how Sysco was able to tolerate his wildcat type lumper work without having him run off the property. They must have gotten a cut of his work back then as cash.

Waiting time in a situation of modern trucking loads on pallets when you reach a warehouse with 300 docks, a mile wide and only 5 forklifts working to save on overall building expenses (Silly small change when you consider the robotics being introduced into the then new Amazon style places and the costs of cold storage cooling in terms of power etc.) we never considered in those very early days just how monstrously bad impact against the trucker in terms of wait times that never improved. They will sit there and wait hours if not also days and nights. The whole system has to be changed somehow. If it takes 1000 people to be hired and 400 new forklifts to be bought in that big place then let's get it done. (60K t0 100K or more per forklift etc)

Im wastimg time posting on a culture or situation that is set or completely part of live load, live unloading on our warehouses that will never change in a thousand life times. It would be better to be doing some different kinds of trucking where there is no waiting more than say 20 minutes to uncover 3 coils that they will crane off your flatbed in a beer brewer right quick. You just need to be on time with that covered wagon or flatbed.

That is where we found a form of prosperity, when we finally just stopped being involved in grocery, cold storage etc. (I probably did nothing but that from 21 years old all the way into the early 30's and I changed into other kinds of trucking. Which was way better in terms of wait times saved and money to be made.

Fast forward to my 50's Ive got a skeleton of a 75 year old as a result of that kind of manual work. I was quite something in those years, but not now. They are are making a decision of they want to drop in a replacement metal or composite material joint to chop out the rotted hip leg joint area in surgery. Otherwise I will progress from using a cane to a wheel chair in a year or two. And that's if it's not bone cancer or some other really bad form of problems. I am waiting on the pictures to be interpreted and results decided on as I write this.

This would be directly related to loading trailers with 48000 pounds of butter and unloading same from the floor within 20 hours at Hunts Point several times a week for years. No lumpers, just myself. Lumpers were paid out of my pocket in any place where a reload is threatened by the excessive wait times. I would pay the 60 to get empty and gone to reload that afternoon on a 1000 dollar run that just cannot be missed or given to some other person. (Seasonal garden flowers to stores, many stops a week, something like 20 to 30 stores in 5 days once a year for some weeks. We did it as a solo or as a team (Which worked out way better then for the both of us...)

What did I get out of it? Nothing. Inflation took care of that.

 

Simple solution...for those that have a choice...refuse any and all loads to all syscos..

 

All drivers have choices on whether they take loads or not, no matter what the company tells you. I told my 2nd to last company the day they try and send me to a Walmart D.C. is the day I quit. I made that very clear from the beginning in orientation. They tried it once, I went to the nearest terminal, and handed my keys in after I cleaned out my truck. I got a call from Operations asking what happened. I told them, and I also said I guess you guys thought I was joking, well I'm not. I don't go to ANY Walmart D.C. under ANY circumstance. I told you guys that in orientation, and I told everyone who would listen to me, here are my keys, peace out. And left.

If you have a clean dac, psp and can pass a physical without an issue, YOU run the ship, not them. Keep your nose clean, your dac and psp clean, at all costs, no matter what.

 

Rrrrriiiigggghhhtt. That's really makes a lot of sense. That attitude and 50 cents won't even buy you a coffee. Not saying you didn't do just that. I'm just saying that's stupid and will lead to a very short career as an employee truck driver in today's world.