Ben E. Keith

Good luck to you.

 

I can't comment on how it is to work for them, but I have a close friend who is a manager of a very popular restaurant here in town. He uses Performance Food, Sysco, Ben E. Keith and occasionally a few others. He says hands down, Ben E Keith is far superior to the others - ESPECIALLY in terms of making sure he has what he needs (last minute orders, oddball quantities...etc).

 

Food Service can chew up and spit out many drivers. It takes a certain personality to deliver in the food service industry.

 

I know some rookies that have had plenty of success starting out running local food P&D. You definitively have to be good using a pallet jack and balancing stuff around on a liftgate. Being good at backing into alot of those tight spots is also a good skill to have. I used to have to do some food delivery on the weekends (massive... and I mean MASSIVE pallets of bagels and soda. I think I dumped one too many over the side before they told me I was going back to linehaul FULLTIME.

No complaints from me, quite honestly, there is absolutely no dignity in being crushed to death by a 1,200 lbs pallet of tortilla shells or bagels.

 

I dumped five crates of chocolate shake mix off my ramp on my first hand cart load last Friday morning. When something is going over you have to get out of the way and let it go. No sense in getting hurt trying to save food.

 

It also helps if the guys loading your truck aren't complete jackholes. I used to run food P&D 6 days a week, 3 with a 48' and daycab, and 3 with a straight truck that held 10 skids. The straight truck was a nightmare because there was no room to move stuff around and almost every drop was with a hand truck. My first stop one morning was 20 cases of chicken which was supposed to be on skid 10 by the door, but instead they switched skid 10 and 7 putting my 20 cases of chicken behind 2 full skids and no dock to move anything. Had to climb over the skids and take 2 cases at a time over the back skids off the truck, took about an hour as I'm not a small man and climbing over that stuff was not easy. Almost quit that day. Then I've had skids on the trailer piled to the ceiling surrounded by half and quarter skids with no vertical bracing. 120 boxes of breaded chicken wings scattered across the trailer by the time I got to the back where they were.

Also that company run their drivers like dogs, I'll never do food P&D again, my experience left a bad taste (haha).

 

Doesn't sound like there's much difference between food P&D and LTL freight P&D...

I was making a delivery one afternoon at a place that manufactures shaker screens and right next door was some kind piping place. Got the screens off, then was going next door to deliver a 3,000 pound crate of pipe fittings. Had the folks at the screen place use their forklift to pull the crate to the back of the trailer for me so I didn't have to move it with my pallet jack. There was a long gravel drive (private, not public) connecting the two parking lots, so I didn't even have to get on the highway. I take off down the gravel road (already delivered to both of these places dozens of time) and wouldn't you know it, somebody on a golf cart was out for a joy ride and cut across right in front of me. I hit the brakes hard, and that crate that was at the tail of the trailer came flying to the front and busted. It took almost 4 hours to make that delivery. Picked up all those fittings - piece by piece. And it was a HOT S.O.B. inside that 53' that day....over 100 degrees OUTSIDE the trailer. Funny thing is, I even went through the trouble to put my load bar in front of the crate like I was supposed to. Me and the fella laughed about it and joked around about how it wasn't gonna stop the crate if a situation were to arise.

I almost quit that day...

 

Congratulations to you!!!!!!!

 

Today we had some extra events going on so we were stretched. In a straight truck the route included two pick ups back at the warehouse almost 1000 pcs all day, anyway...
Stop one I open the first skid to learn the truck was missing the first two skids, the loaders botched it. I return to the warehouse get a great swamper and we get what we think is missing. Stop Four we learn there is now a skid at the warehouse with the dry goods, so we had to return to all of those stops once we loaded the truck a second time.

When returning for the third load I was asked to take a trailer up Island for six stops on a real milk run. I visited for the first time the tiny community of
Genoa Bay BC.
Google it.

My Uncle(Runs nightly Vancouver/Seattle switch) always told me in trucking "you have to take the good with the bad"
The bad from the morning was forgotten on the good long winding road into the bay. One caveat, today was ideal conditions and in the middle of winter the drive can be more part of the bad then good part of the day.