Walmart Dedicated out of Fontana OC

LOL. But!, you would be pulling a loaded container into AZ and then deadheading back, so I've heard lol. Yes im is either feast or famine. Our freight DIED with the bad weather back east. Its slowly been coming in over the last 4-5 days. Rail yards are not that bad at all. Every now and then you'll run into a long delay. Does not happen too often.

 

Wal-Mart has grocery freight when no one else does. When freight dies in December, we run hard. The Schneider drivers I've talked to out of Fontana run like we do. We drop to stores then go for backhauls. Sometimes we go into CO, ID, WY, NM for the backhauls. Oh, and UT.

I was told by Schneider drivers they also have slip seaters. So those drivers are home everyday for their ten. What they do is just local store deliveries.

You made the comment you plan your deliveries for early in the morning; heres the thing about W-M....you plan zip. You get told what goes where and when. You have time deadlines to deliver by and frankly some of the stores are a pain in the patootie.

Our fleet in AZ has delivered to parts of CA for years but W-M has a new DC and the new dedicated fleet there will be taking those deliveries. So.......there should be some new openings for you over in CA. I'm not certain but I was told that Schneider had the new contract. I could have been told wrong though. LOL

You run hard on a W-M dedicated fleet no matter who you drive for. But....you get home and you have freight. My husband and I drive team and we haven't seen a week less than 4500 miles except for recently when they put us local and we didn't get miles but made good $ anyway. We usually run 5000 to 6000 miles per week.

If Schneider pays like Swift you'll be paid by miles and stops. The more stops the more stop pay.

I hope this helps even a little bit.

 

Oh you asked what's the catch...............every holiday has high grocery demand and you'll work your patootie off. Forget about time off at holidays.

 

Well im use to working holidays as i had to in my old job all the time. I've done some walmart loads before (nothing dedicated though) with the multiple store stop loads and such. I've been told you need to be a good load pre-planner for the walmart account, which i am really good at. I dont mind having wierd delivery times or having to run hard either, as long as i have freight to keep me moving i stay motivated because running hard means more $$ in the end (at least it does usually lol). Now that you mention the whole account take over thing, i did notice about 10-15 brand spankin new walmart reefers in the fontana OC the last time i was there a few weeks past. For some reason i know the walmart account in fontana wants you to have a twic card as well, not a problem since i already have one, but i wonder what you would need one for?

 

Perhaps Schneider does it differently then. For us, the loads are planned by Wal-Mart according to what store/stores they load the trailers for. They even decide who is delivered to first, second, etc. Our trip planners will choose who gets what routes (a route will have a loaded trailer going out) and if that route has a back haul or not.

As for the twic......sometimes you enter ports for bananas. LOL Well.....other stuff too but mainly we've done banana runs. I keep telling our fleet manager we need a hawaiian pineapple run. No go so far. ROFL

 

The walmart loads I've done are similar to that, pick up a preloaded trailer that has say 3 stops at stores which are pre-selected in a certain order and are usually somewhat close to each other with little to no free time between deliveries. The walmart stores I have delivered to have always been great to deal with too...the distribution centers are a different story lol.

And yes once they build that bridge to Hawaii I will be first in line for that dedicated run lol

 

Yo Chuck, how are things going?