Why does Walmart hire out 3rd party companies?

Cost . It is cheaper to sub out the trucking than it is to put in a shop buy trucks and hire drivers .

 

DC to store mostly because they don't have anywhere near enough driver to do all their freight. Also saves a lot of money.

 

Quite possibly, it's cheaper to use a common carrier VS running their own truck on certain routes.

 

Easy to tell a third party carrier the party is over when their seasonal freight is done. Not so much for an employee. Some of these companies do haul Walmart year round though. I'm sure they have "deals" where they have to be able to provide flex capacity to cover busy times.

 

I did a regional run as special project with them. Went to stores and dcs

 

It has to do with the logistics system they have. I know that may not make any sense to you but but it has to do with flexibility and planning of capacity. They can't move some of their freight to all the stores themselves because they maxed out their capacity so they contract it out. Cost is not a real factor involved, because it is more costly to have an external company haul the freight than the internal resources in the long run but expanding their fleet to take max capacity and then have no freight to haul seems to be a bit dumb and costly.

 

To hedge their bets against a union being formed within the private fleet.

 

Most of the contracted fleets haul perishable groceries from their grocery DC's to the stores. For example Werner has the one in Tomah WI, Crete has the one in North Platte NE, Schneider has LaSalle IL, and so on. Werner will contract with you in Tomah to pull Walmart trailers as power only on your own authority. Seen Landstar post pulling Walmart trailers in Pauls Valley OK at 2.00 per mile plus stops a few months ago.