Beverage drivers Tell me about the work/pay

[Super 8]

Got an interview tomorrow with Snapple/Dr Pepper. I have a year OTR experience.

I'm curious about the hours, other beverage drivers are working, and the pay rate, so I have some idea on what to negotiate for.

Any info would be great.

These guys are just down the street from me, so if it works out I could walk to work most days.

Thanks a lot!

[DarthJayhawk]

I delivered beer in Wichita KS for about 7 months. The best thing I can say about that job was that it allowed me to get my CDL.

This particular distributor paid a starting salary of $26,000, and the first three months or so I helped other drivers on their routes, or I filled in when someone was gone. I was then "promoted" to a country route(meaning I delivered to the smaller towns around Wichita). That job should have paid commision, as I also had the sales responsibilities for each stop. Instead, they kept me on salary, raised my pay to $28,000, and I started working better than 50 hours per week. Once the summer was over with, they finally decided they wanted to put me on commision, but that was no good, because the busy season was over, so the commisions would be less. I decided to find another job.

Delivering beverages is a lot of hard work, unless you back up to a door, wheel off a couple of pallets, and head out to your next stop. You normally have to check in the product, stock and rotate the products, help with merchandising, and deal with grouchy store managers and owners. Plus the product is primarily made of water, which isn't light.

Also, it would be helpful to know if the routes are presold, or if you sell directly off the truck. If you have to sell directly off the truck, it can be pretty tricky at first, as it is hard to anticipate what your customers are going to need.

If they are going to pay you an hourly wage, to deliver a presold product, it isn't a bad job, but don't accept any other form of compensation for this job.

[classicxl]

I worked for pepsi for a while and found out i was just a stock boy not a truck driver. the pay was high but alot of back breaking work hauling hand carts through the snow and stocking coolers and shelved because that is the deal your sales guy made with the store. Also no helper with that company but the local bud guys always had two guys to a truck

[Super 8]

the pay was high but alot of back breaking work hauling hand carts

How high was the pay? What are we talking about here? 30k, 40k?

I'm not overly concerned about moving the stock. My OTR experience was flatbed. This can't be any harder than chaining, and dealing with tarps.

Also, how many were you working?

Thanks.

[Super 8]

This particular distributor paid a starting salary of $26,000,

raised my pay to $28,000,

These figures seem really low to me. On a 50 hour week, that's less than $10 an hour.

[MADLUX]

Got an interview tomorrow with Snapple/Dr Pepper. I have a year OTR experience.

I'm curious about the hours, other beverage drivers are working, and the pay rate, so I have some idea on what to negotiate for.

Any info would be great.

These guys are just down the street from me, so if it works out I could walk to work most days.

Thanks a lot!

It depends on what you go on, I'm with 7up (same company by the way) here in Va Beach. I lucked out and got on a Bulk Tractor Trailer, which I deliver, take the product off with a pallet jack, get it checked in and go. I don't work any product on to the store shelf.



Side load trucks are a different story. Run away.... .



As far as hours it depends. There is nothing set. One day I might work 5 hours, the next is 12.

Pay scales are different from plant to plant also. Some hourly, or like me Base pay and commission.

[Super 8]

Side load trucks are a different story. Run away.... .


Pay scales are different from plant to plant also. Some hourly, or like me Base pay and commission.

OKay, what's the problem with the side loads?

As far as pay goes, and you give me some figure to shoot for? Just a ball park so I don't price myself out, or low ball?

Thanks.

[DarthJayhawk]

Yeah, that pay was really low. I wasn't the first guy that got his CDL and got the hell away from that place. I'm just getting ready to take a flat bed job, but I'm pretty sure it won't be the all day, every day type of work that delivering beer was. I averaged 20-25 stops a day, delivering anywhere from 25-250 cases a stop. And you had to work fast, if you wanted to get home at a decent time. I also know it was one of the worst distributors to work at. The other beverage distributors didn't have near the turnover.

As madlux says, get on a bulk truck if you can. The side load trucks are like the job I had. You have to unload everything off the truck onto a dolly by hand, then unload it off the dolly by hand. I had another job where I drove OTR, but fairly often I had to load by hand. The boxes were fairly heavy, but it was a lot better than the beer truck.

Hopefully this company pays well, and doesn't work you to death. There are some good distributors to work for, I didn't find one though. And I didn't think the work would be anywhere near as hard as it was.

[Super 8]

Anybody else?

I was hoping to get a few more responses.

Thanks.

[classicxl]

the pay was 13 to 18 dollars an hour doing 8-11 hours a day

[Bumper]

So, how did the interview go?

[Super 8]

So, how did the interview go?

I go later this afternoon.

The info I've dug up on this forum has given me cause for concern. I don't know how many are just disgruntled former employees, or just worked for bad companies. I'd really like for this to work out, but I'm employed now, and I'm not desperate for a job.

I girl I know has a husband who has been with Pepsi for 10 years. He seems to like it from what I've heard. But I haven't spoken to him directly.

I don't know. I'd hate to leave my present job and rearrange my family schedule and then find that I made a mistake.

does anyone have anything positive to say?

[Bumper]

Ah, ok. I have never done local delivery before. Sorry I couldnt be of more help.

Good luck in your decision though.

I just had to make the decision to go back OTR again and it wasnt easy but once I did, I am happy with it.

[Orangetxguy]

So, how did the interview go?

I go later this afternoon.

The info I've dug up on this forum has given me cause for concern. I don't know how many are just disgruntled former employees, or just worked for bad companies. I'd really like for this to work out, but I'm employed now, and I'm not desperate for a job.

I girl I know has a husband who has been with Pepsi for 10 years. He seems to like it from what I've heard. But I haven't spoken to him directly.

I don't know. I'd hate to leave my present job and rearrange my family schedule and then find that I made a mistake.

does anyone have anything positive to say?

That is whom you should speak too! Go into that interview with an open mind. Ask pertinent questions!

[DarthJayhawk]

I don't want to totally discourage you. Being home every night makes up for a lot of the crap you may have to deal with. Just keep in mind that if it is a side load truck, that is a LOT of work. And my experiences came from a crappy company. If you have the health and youth, and they pay a fair hourly wage, it may be a good move. Plus you may be able to eventually move into a supervisory/management, or sales job. Being OTR doesn't offer to many of those opportunities.

When I was working for the distributor I worked for, I kept thinking I was underpaid for the amount of work I was doing. Turns out I was right. But I also know a few guys who work for the right distributors, work just as hard as I did, get paid a whole lot better, and are really happy at it. You got to make the best decision for yourself. Good luck.

[ajritter04]

Of course, I found this thread after the interview took place, but I'll add my two cents anyway.

WARNING:
Long post to follow....... :wink:

I drove a side load 16-bay tractor / trailer for Pepsi here in Albuquerque.
I was paid $500 / wk salary plus a "bonus" of 10 cents per case delivered.
Normally, I would have anywhere from 600 - 700 cases on my truck per day, which comes out to $60 - $70 per day for the "bonus". On average, I would gross $750 - $850 per week depending on how busy my routes were and how pushy the sales reps were that week.

I would deliver to schools, restaurants (Arby's & some locally owned places), some businesses, recreational establishments (bowling alleys & golf couses), and of course gas stations, and convenience stores. Sometimes I would deliver to some of the smaller neighborhood grocery stores, but that was maybe two or three times per month.

My day would start around 4:30am when I would come in, print out my inventory and my stop list, have the inventory checked by the yard dog to make sure the trailer had been loaded correctly, and to load my hand cart and portable curb ramp into the truck. That whole process normally took about 30 minutes. By 5am, I was on the road to my first stop where I would unload, by hand, each and every case of product that they had ordered.

Once the entire order was inside the building, someone would have to check the order in, again, one-by-one by hand, to make sure everything was there and accounted for. After the order was verified, I had to fully stock every shelf, cooler, rack, display, etc that Pepsi had at that particular location. This included rotating stock, giving credit for damaged or out of date merchandise, and picking up the empty "shells" (which are the plastic cases the product is stored in" to return at the end of the day.

My average stop was around 50 cases, though I had some single stop orders that were in excess of 200 cases. Once you get good at unloading and stocking, you can get it down to about 5 minutes per case. A 50 case stop would take roughly 30 - 45 minutes while the 200+ case stop took me almost 3 hours.

As for the stops - on a light day I might have 12 - 15 stops while on a busy day, 18+ was pretty common. The Pepsi warehouse in Albuquerque had routes that went as far south as Socorro, which was pretty close to 100 miles away from the warehouse and as far north as Cuba, which clocked in at around 50 miles away.

I was unlucky enough to have the route that went to Socorro. I had that route every Wednesday, so on Wednesdays, instead of coming in at 4:30am, I was there between 3am and 3:30am just because it took almost an hour and a half to even get to my first stop.

My first stop on Wednesdays was a truckstop in a little town on I-25 called Lemitar. Their normal order was about 150 cases of stuff. The manager there was pretty cool, he didn't make me stock the coolers, so I just had to unload the truck, take it inside to be checked in, then move everything to the cooler. Even being able to skip the stocking process, it still took me a good hour and a half to two hours to complete that stop - and I still had 17 more stops after that.

Remember me saying that I would start my day at 4:30am? I didn't get home until almost 5:30pm - 6:00pm every night. 12 hour days were the norm, with 14 not being unheard of. Also, remember how I said I would gross roughly $800 per week?

$800 gross divided by 60 hours per week comes out to around $13 an hour. Too bad I didn't actually take home $800.
My net (take home) pay was about $550 - $600 after taxes and insurance premiums were taken out. So now we're at $10 an hour, sounds OK, right?

I worked there for 7 months and in that time I had heat exhaustion 3 times, started to develop arthritis in my hands, knees, and elbows, and my back was constantly sore the entire 7 months. A female co-worker was taken to the hospital, via ambulance, after collapsing due to heat stroke last July because of workload. Not very much fun.

Yeah, I was home every night, but when I came in from work I ate dinner, took a shower, and went to bed by 7:30pm just so I could be up and at work again by 4:30am. I gt to spend maybe an hour to an hour and a half with my family at night, and then I spent half of my Saturday sleeping and just generally recouperatng from the week which left very little time for anything else.

Since then, I went to work for a local construction outfit driving their "field service truck" which is pretty much just a glorified fuel tanker. I get paid $18 / hour to drive from job site to job site, put a fuel hose into a piece of equipment, like a front loader or something, fuel it up, and then scurry off to the next job site.

Today was a "busy" day for me...I fueled 9 pieces of equipment and worked a whopping 7 hours. The hardest thing I have to do is pull the fuel hose off the reel.

Beverage delivery is back breaking, low paying (for the amount of time and effort involved) and tedious - but they'll hire almost anyone with a CDL and a decent driving record. If you're looking at this type of job just so you can be home at night and on the weekends.....I would suggest that you keep looking.

I drove SW regional for Swift prior to working for Pepsi and I left Swift so I could be home more. Technically, I was indeed home more, but I was almost never able to do anything, so it's like I wasn't really there. Pepsi actually made me miss driving for Swift.

[Super 8]

Thanks a lot everyone for your input.

The job interview went fine. The mgr was a young guy who spent the whole time telling me about the job and answering my questions, but barely asked me about myself. I think he's a little inexperienced himself. Nice guy though.

It doesn't appear to be nearly as intensive as some of the routes I've read about, but then it isn't Coke/Pepsi either. It's a fairly small place, 12 drivers total.

The bulk delivery indeed seems like the place to be, however one has to work their way up into one of those positions, and the pay is about what I was hoping the sideloaders would be starting at.

The position was as a trainee, helping out with the larger routes until someone quits and then I'd get my own. The pay alone was not enough for me to consider leaving my current job.

The hours were actually not too bad. Maybe 40-50 a week, and I'd be home at a decent time....maybe 3:30-4pm.

But there were too many minuses about the job.
So, I guess I'm not going forward with this.

G&D is an area LTL that I've heard good things about. The days are like 12 hours minimum, and I was really trying to avoid pouring that much of my time into my job, thus cutting short my time to exercise, play with my kids, and take classes to finish my degree. But the pay is pretty good. More than I was making OTR.

I dunno what I'm gonna do. But, I'm employed now and things are stable, so I've got time to think things over.

Anyway, thanks again.