The Food Service Rant thread

I guess the past two winters have spoiled me because this week that was actually winter was an interesting one. I spent two days running the GR-Muskegon-Holland triangle, one day in Northwest Indiana, one day local and today running around central Indiana like a lunatic. Felt good to be away from Lake Michigan for once and see sunshine and roads that weren't covered in ice, snow and other delights.
I've been at this company for a little over three years. The money is good, the hours are long, it keeps me in shape(I'm 47 and in the best shape of my life. Although it is all relative. Heh.) This past year I watched a few guys leave and one of those come back after six months. It made me decide to put out a few feelers. I got a couple of bites and one definite nibble. That nibble, if it comes to anything, would put me back in a semi for the first time since '02. It would also have me running to Chicago on a daily basis pulling a 28' pup doing C-store deliveries.
I'm content where I'm at and will stay there if the nibble turns out to be nothing, but for some odd reason I feel like I want a new challenge. Not sure why, maybe it's my mid-life crisis. Only time will tell.

 

I know starting over kind of sucks, in a way I've done it before, but now I'm not really interested in starting over anymore, I just stay where I am it pays the bills and I'm almost at top pay rate, I can't keep starting over, plus where I'm at is the best deal for me. However I know sometimes routes can get stale.

 

Last week sucked between the weather, cases and number of stops and just generally the inexperience and still learning

 

Can someone give me a rundown about driving for Mclanei have a interview this week, I’ve been throwing Pepsi since last January and made a little over 50k before that I was in a straight truck doing produce for 3 years until I turned 21 and got my CDL. I’d like to find out about Home time, first year pay, and more About the extra board

 

Man these first few weeks have been brutal by myself. Im learning that by the book isnt feasible most of the time. Its best just to stack off and go and not work out everything

 

Where do you live? I work for Frito Lay (Pepsico) and a bunch of former pepsi guys work here. The first year Frito driver makes around 65K

 

I’m out of Daytona Beach and yeah absolutely I’ve heard the chip guys do well only thing is I’d like to get away from the merchandising If I could. How many hours a week do you average? I know it would be a pretty easy transfer to Frito-Lay from Pepsi.

 

Which McLane? There are now 3 divisions Grocery, Foodservice, and former MBM side. All are very different in pay and how they operate. By from what you said it’s very easy to make over 50k here more likely 60k plus but there are a lot of variables depending on type of McLane? Terminal? Cause some terminals have to travel some don’t. You could be home everyday or have 1-2 day layovers. Extraboard is extraboard it’s all over the place with a schedule. Takes 6 months to really figure it out. But when you do you kinda have a schedule or know when your gonna Work. Depending on how busy your terminal is you can land a schedule right away or it could take a year or more. One thing with all three is when you hit top out there’s a lot of money to be made here. You can negotiate depending how much experience you have deliverying to start at a higher pay rate if your terminal is hard up. I’m topped out only took 8 months. Big difference from where my starting pay is. No merchandising here might have to hand stack a freezer cause it’s small or separate some dry goods but better then merchandising. I work for the Foodservice side.

 

Thank you for the info I appreciate it I’m interviewing at a plant that’s grocery and I’m expecting a call from the other plant this week that is food service. They’re about 20 minutes apart from each other. Based in Orlando so pretty big market the grocery plant is advertising short haul and same day routes and the food service is saying 80% 2 day 20% 1day I have a little over 4 years experience with food and beverage delivery so I feel I have some leverage here with pay negotiations. Would you recommend food service or the grocery side.

 

I looked at their website, seems like that job is under their OTR section? The local driver jobs sound like step-van or box truck.