Posted: 2 months ago
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Article: Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
I'm going to try to squeeze in a proper response over the next few hours when I have a chance, Davy. So bear with me, I'll get back at ya.
Posted: 2 months ago
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Article: Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
Another factor to consider when asking why Walmart pays so much, or attempts to attract the best drivers:
With Walmart consistently ranking as one of the safest fleets, one has to realize that is due to the safe practices of it's drivers. So you have to wonder: How much money are they saving by reducing costs associated with accidents, equipment damage, lawsuits, and loss of product? Not to mention the bad press they would receive in the public's eye (remember Tracy Morgan and the 90 million payout?)
I'm not a mathematician or statistician, but one would think the huge losses incurred by accidents would be far greater than the relatively low cost of paying for the best drivers.
Posted: 2 months ago
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Don't touch another driver's equipment
He was lucky to not end up with my fist in his mouth.
Really? A fist to the mouth? That's not extreme at all...
First, I agree that no one should touch your trailer, especially with their own political agenda. But it doesn't take violence to remove it.
Second, FJB.
Posted: 2 months ago
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Article: Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
They only care that you're a safe driver. You will pull both dry and reefer as a WM driver, so experience in one or the other doesn't matter. In fact, if you recall I was a flatbed driver, and had never pulled a van at all before coming here.
Posted: 2 months ago
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Article: Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
Some of the info about driving for Walmart I’ve encountered in my research says the 100,000 or more gross for the first year is not necessarily accurate. Is that a reliable number?
I did $101k my first calendar year, and that was before the fleet-wide driver pay increase that rolled out in Feb '22. That was also when I was running a lighter, lower paying schedule that gave me an extra day off every other week.
If you can't bust 100k in a year you aren't even trying.
Posted: 2 months ago
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Article: Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
Obviously I'm biased, but it seems to me the company's approach to hiring and retaining drivers is one of common sense. The supply chain, distribution, and logistics networks are all the most vital facets of the business model. Without skilled reliable drivers, every other facet suffers.
When I was in onboarding/orientation, one of the managers explained the philosophy of the driver culture here at Walmart. He explained it in a way that broke it down into its most basic form.
Basically, Walmart is not a transportation company. It doesn't derive it's profit from moving goods from point A to point B, unlike most carriers. Instead, the focus is on the customer. If Mrs. Jones walks into a Walmart and doesn't see her favorite coffee, cat food, or flavor of Pringles on the shelf, she'll go down the road to [insert competitor's store], and you've potentially lost her forever. That is simply unacceptable. The shelves can never be allowed to go empty. Therefore, the driver's job is the most important in the company. It isn't uncommon for me to go 200-300 miles to just drop off one or two pallets at a single store.
When a store dedicates most of its floor space to sales, leaving precious little room in the back for stock, the daily or sometimes hourly distribution of product is vitally important. Such is the importance of a driver who can get it there in one piece and on time.
In another thread, Rob T. mentioned how private fleets tend to operate in this fashion, and driver compensation in those fleets is always on the upper end of the scale. It just makes sense to have the best of the best and pay them for it.
With the way I love my job and the compensation package attached to it, it's still baffles me that we aren't at capacity with our drivers yet. My DC alone still wants upwards of 50 additional private fleet drivers.
As for hiring and training new drivers from the supply chain associates, I'm not real concerned about it. The standards and requirements are still very strict, from what I understand.
Posted: 2 months, 2 weeks ago
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I've yet to see it say anything outright wrong yet.
I just found a wrong answer.
Sample question:
Which is better, recaps or resets?
Part of the answer says this:
A reset, also known as a "34-hour restart," is a consecutive 34-hour break that includes two periods from 1:00 am to 5:00 am.
The 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. requirement was done away with years ago.
Not a big deal, but something to look into.
Posted: 2 months, 2 weeks ago
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I've been pondering this for a couple days now. I like the idea of AI scouring the web, doing the necessary research to return positive, accurate results that would otherwise be lost or forgotten. It's use can be far-reaching and beneficial. I get that. For the most part, I agree that AI, and it's integration into our lives is inevitable. Adapt or die, as they say.
*Donning my tinfoil hat...
The problem I have is with this:
One thing I'm doing is using AI to convert the user's question into a more advanced and detailed question (or series of questions) that will produce better results.
What attracted me to this website from the start was the genuineness and authenticity of the users. Good or bad, we knew who we were dealing with. It was real. Unless I'm misinterpreting this, now you're talking about doing away with, or at least altering the human element, with it's own set of unique characteristics, and replacing it with your own (or AI's own) Utopian version of how information should be shared. In this setting, AI that is used to help "produce better results" will only serve to increase our reliance upon it, I'm afraid.
The implementation of AI into these very real questions and conversations is perhaps less of a commentary on the effectiveness of AI, and more of a lament of the collective lack of critical thinking in our society today. Just do what the Telescreen tells you to do.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not a fan of altering or editing questions to better tailor a response that fits a narrative. I like talking to real people, and I still believe in individuality. The instant I think I'm talking to a robot directing me to a canned message, I'm out.
On that, I guess I would just have to see how it played out. I'll be happy to join the sample pool. Hopefully, my concerns will be unwarranted.
Posted: 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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I seem to think I've been there, but I'm just not sure. WM has many satellite facilities scattered all over the place. Some are consolidation centers, some are dedicated to online sales, some are fulfillment centers (and I don't even know what the heck that means). I frequent these types of places with not even a clue as to what I'm picking up. Actually, I'm usually dropping off at these places and hooking an empty otw out.
To answer your question, those places aren't usually where pf drivers will be based. You're more likely to be based out of a regional DC. But I don't know what I don't know. Maybe there's something I'm not aware of.
For the most recent hiring info in your area, go to drive4walmart.com and navigate your way to the postings.
Once you come over to our side, you'll never go back. Hit me up.
Posted: 2 months ago
View Topic:
Article: Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
No, in fact there are no differences that I've seen, at least not in the mechanics of it. We show up, either drop and hook or live unload, then back to the DC or backhaul vendor. Rinse, repeat.
I think this may be the biggest hang-up people have about coming to Walmart. As a result, Walmart has dropped the slip seating policy for the most part. However, there are still times when you will switch trucks, but never in the middle of your week.
Certain schedules, called "programs", have 3 drivers sharing 2 trucks. Go back to my diary where I outline the different programs. They come up for bid annually, and are often taken up by senior drivers. There are some advantages to these programs, such as a 3-day weekend instead of a 2-day. The disadvantage, in my mind, is you empty your truck at the end of your week, and one of the other drivers in your program hops in for his or her week. When you return following your weekend you hop in the 2nd truck for your 2nd week. Next week you hop back in the first truck again, and so on. It's Walmart's way of keeping those two trucks running 7 days a week, even though you yourself are only working 5 days.
That said, the majority of schedules, at least at my own dc, are regular 5-day schedules. You go home at the end of your week and your truck sits there until you come back. I'm on such a schedule, and can count on one hand the amount of times someone else has driven my truck in the last 4+ years. But there are those times. Like if someone has to put their truck in the shop, and needs a different truck for a day or two, management may put them in my truck while I'm at home on my weekend. It's very rare though. Most of the time they will put you in an unassigned truck temporarily.
There have been times when my truck wasn't out of the shop when I returned after a weekend. So management puts me in a temporary truck for my full week. I can hop back in my truck when it comes out of the shop midweek, but I always opt to just stay in the temporary truck for the full week. Who wants to keep moving their stuff around?
So that's a long way of saying slip seating doesn't really happen, not in the traditional definition. To be fair, I can only speak for my DC in Johnstown, and our sister DC in Marcy. Other places may be different, but I doubt it.
Yes, schedule and route bids are annual, and seniority-based. As far as "routes" go, there are really only a few that are considered choice. I believe those routes were created to simply award the long time drivers of 20+ years, and rightfully so in my opinion.
Other routes are reserved for home daily daycab drivers. Those routes are also usually taken up by senior drivers. I live a little too far away for a daily commute to be feasible, so they aren't desirable to me anyway.
We also have Long Island routes where the driver serves the island stores every day, and those come with a $50 daily bonus for dealing with the traffic and hassle down there. I want nothing to do with that mess, so again I don't even bid on it. It's surprising how many drivers want that extra money. They can have it.
Those three examples, along with the programs mentioned above and other random routes, make up only a small percentage of the available bids at my dc. The vast majority of bids are for what they call 5-day driver and only determine the start day of your week. You will not be on a set route, and can deliver to any store within our network. Obviously a Monday start day will give you the weekend off, so those bids are the most desirable.
I guess that would depend on what you consider to be flexibility, and how it applies to you on a daily basis. A better question may be to ask how necessary is flexibility when you drive for Walmart.
Everything is taken care of for us. The loads are planned and loaded well in advance. There is practically zero wait time necessitating a schedule change. You get your paperwork, deliver the load, come back and do it again. Even the backhauls are a breeze. Most are drop and hook, and even at the live loads we are given priority. This goes back to the power mentioned in the article that Walmart has in it's supply chain. Rarely do I sit at a shipper more than an hour. If I know I'm facing a 2-hour-ish wait, a simple call to dispatch will get me pulled off that load. They don't want us sitting around. They want us rolling, moving product, and making money.
My flexibility comes in the form of setting my Estimated Time of Departure (ETD). The ETD is the time that you expect to complete your entire trip and be ready to leave the gate with your next one. I enter/update my ETD at every stop along a trip. The planners use that info to accurately set up your next trip long before you get back. If you want extra time upon your return to shower, grab something to eat, or shoot the breeze with other drivers, simply add that into your ETD. It doesn't get a whole lot easier.
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