Farm Pick Up Milk Hauling

I used to haul milk for a large company in California. Expect very long days, and your employer may invoke an agricultural exemption which will allow them to call the driver back after only 8 hours off duty. Additionally, you may be on the clock up to 16 hours a day, every day, and the legal exemption states you do not need any DOT reset.

Consider that the dairy farms are filthy and almost half your day will be spent loading the tanker, dealing with things at the dairy that you wouldn't normally deal with as a driver. You have to take stick readings of the milk, you have to weigh/sample the milk, and you will be stomping around in animal feces a lot of the time. The hose that you hook up to the farm tank will also be covered in god knows what kind of filth from the dairy farm; also, you will spend a significant amount of time at the creamery unloading and washing out.

The craziest thing is going to the dairy farmer's farm in the dead of night at like 3 AM and nearly getting mauled by their guard dog, who doesn't understand that you are there to pick up their milk. Most people at the farms will not speak english and I found that the dairy farms would be an OSHA inspector's worst nightmare, if they even made it that far. Those places don't really get inspected, it would seem; they fly under the radar.

It was hard for me to do that job, you see the animals suffering and even the farm laborers are suffering since they are basically slaves. Remember that agriculture exemption I talked about at the beginning of my post? The 8 hours and you're back on the clock; that exemption was enacted for the guys who work on the farm, but that won't stop your employer from telling you it applies to you personally. A typical day would give me 4-5 hours of sleep before I was driving back to work. Good luck.

 

from what I've seen advertised the pay was hourly and it didnt pay twell . this dairy did do local and otr.. the best thing to do is inquire with the said company you're interested in..

I havent looked that dirrection since that discovery .. could be different now

 

My Dad hauled milk from the farms to dairies around western new york for years. He loved the job but the money just wasn't there for drivers. It's a holidays, weekends, birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, 4th of July kind of job. Farms go 365 and they move milk 365. Holidays were the worst for him because many milk plants were shut down so #### near every milk hauler ended up at surplus plants and waited and waited. Winters were bad obviously in New York but summertime he absolutely loved the job, again no money to be made though.

 

Let me guess, he did a lot of Perry's Ice Cream in Akron and Sorrento and Rich's in Buffalo. Never hauled milk myself, but grew up surrounded by dairy fairs.

 

When I was a kid it was Mesmers in Grand Island, Sorrentos, Dairylea and Upstate in Buffalo, OATKA in Batavia, and there was a small dairy in Arcade as well as Alden. I'm sure there were others I can't recall but I went to many riding with my old man in the summertime.

 

My uncles all drove milk trucks as well. It was a different time back then for sure. They would carry a six pack of beer in the sample cooler and pop a top while loading and unloading. I think the government frowns on those kind of rest breaks anymore.

 

i loaded tanks to be hauled off for awhile, the money was not that good the trucks were not maintained well but that was more the company than the industry. i liked the dairies, but sometimes things were FUBAR. Sometimes loads were not ready, sometimes i would help milk just to get it ready to load. It was good experience but i'm not sure i would do it again, but i have a great tanker job now, because of that experience

 

My first real trucking job wa for a company that hauled milk as well as other products. In our case the milk drivers that did farm pick up got payed 2 dollars an hour more than the rest of us. They worked different hours due to it being 365 a year. I used to del the milk to the dairy for the farm pick up drivers a lot. I liked it a lot. Had a set schedule and always had a clean truck and trailer because part of your job was to wash them at the dairy. Like someone else said at christmas it would suck but we got paid by the hour so it wasnt that bad. I only had to del 1 1/2 hours away so I could do two loads a night with no issues.

 

I would never pick up milk at dairy farms again, it's just too disgusting and not as much of a driving job. I recommend anyone to haul gasoline if their head can be in the game and you can concentrate on small details.