If you ever pulled a Papa John's trailer

MB made a pitch to me to join, the guy told me thirty dollars an hr!!!! and i talked to the hr guy,he said to put in an ap..anyways i was going to do just that and i did some research and the pay is cpm plus pay based on stops and pieces which ends up being good pay but its NOT home every day (seniority based assignments) and the work is extremely physical,especially with how many stops you do which is hard enough, but i dont think i could do that PLUS the team bs.. im only in my thirties and i would prly have a heart attack trying to do that and having a lack of sleep. maybe if it was near when i first started driving, not now though.

 

I agree. I am 32. In my twenties I pulled for Martin Brower back when they had Quiznos and McDonalds. I liked the Quiznos side of it. I would go out for 4 days and do Detroit and Toledo, then have 3 off. Made good money and ran a day cab. They gave me nice comfy hotels and gave me a company credit card for my meals. It wasn't a bad gig. Then they lost the Quiznos account and McDonalds wasn't worth staying for. I own a truck and am debating on pulling line haul for Roadrunner now. But with fuel and all so high, I don't know. I am also talking to cardinal about transferring down to Houston and running Office Depot. Cardinal treats me pretty good, and the drivers on the other accounts are pretty content. Maybe it is just this crappy account I need out of. Just know I can't do it much longer.

 

I know this is an old thread and this forum is meant for drivers, but I hope you’ll indulge me. A few years ago I did something I still don’t feel good about. I was the transportation supervisor at a Papa Johns QCC.

Unless they’ve totally changed their way of business by putting a lumper in every truck AND insisting the off duty driver stay in the bunk, everything on this thread is true. Both drivers provide physical labor at every stop. No one gets any rest except cat naps between stops and hopefully 3-4 hours on either the out leg or the back leg. Everything is picked to invoice out of the truck and hand-trucked in, 2400pcs, 34,000lbs per load. Three runs per week which keep the drivers out 90-100 hours. People who reach and stretch and twist with heavy loads get hurt. Tired people get hurt more.

I didn’t know going in it was all going to be run illegally. Once I was in, well, I was in…needed a job. The company had plausible deniability by saying “it’s really a gray area…sometimes drivers help out even if they’re in the bunk”—except there was nothing voluntary about it. Company policy said BOTH drivers MUST check off every item at every stop. I worked for a vendor. PJ also had plausible deniability. That’s why they hired a vendor. Oh, that and with their transportation almost evenly divided between three providers (including Trans Papa Logistics) if the DOT came down on one the others could pick up the slack.

I started to realize if something went really sideways only two people would hang for it…the driver behind the wheel and myself. Then one of the finest drivers I’ve known went sliding on his side through the outskirts of a small town. Thank God no one was killed or hurt beyond bumps and scrapes. That was a 25hr day for me as I drove a 750 mile round trip to go get my team. We were always short help and I needed the guy who wasn’t barred from driving by the accident to run the next day. Each of us got about 5hrs sleep and went back to work…him in the truck. It was time to look for another job.

Don’t go to work for this company…please.

 

Thank God that this is being addressed -I worked for a large food service company- team driving for almost 2-years and in those 2 years the company I worked for had more accidents then I seen being in trucking for almost 30 yrs -And the biggest factor is fatigue driver fatigue and yes u will be expected to get out of bunk and help unload -I will never ever do team driving again -reason being is I could not sleep while truck was rolling -I always thought if something bad was to happen all the lawyer have to do is get hold of security tape from place of unload to prove that I wasnt in bunk and my butt would be in prison cuz you know that the company would say the driver knew better and should of been resting -And yes that is true but try and pull that on the road and ur co -driver might have a thing or two to say bout it -I even did line haul and that was bad cuz u drive for 11 hrs and then u try and sleep for ten I would manage to get maybe 3-4 hrs before I woke up and would just lay there awake -I understand that some people can sleep while truck is rolling but most of the other drivers said same thing as me - Hate to say it but from what I saw in those 2-years something bad is bound to happen when u have drivers that work hard all day then drive most of the nite -

 

There is no grey area when it comes to unloading a truck. If the driver lifts a finger to even count pallets legally he is on duty, not driving. It is my understanding that they did make a couple of changes to the definition of sleeper berth, notably that if a driver sits in the driver's seat with the engine off while being loaded, or unloaded he can still legally log sleeper. The idea being that you can actually sit in a seat. That does not mean he can work off the logbook. These are federal, not state regulations so being in a right to work state is irrelevant.

 

No wonder anyone pulling a PJ's trailer is a royal unprofessional ########. What a miserable pathetic existence that would be. My brother managed a PJ's for years and said when they had their own fleet, life was good for PJ distribution drivers. The same guy would show up at the same time each week. Then when they outsourced the distribution, random hobos would show up and drop the crap wherever and you would rarely see the same driver twice.

 

That's not a function of outsourcing, it's a function of the route optimization system ALL carriers, even Trans Papa Logistics (in house carrier) are required to use, provided by Manhattan Associates. http://www.supplychain247.com/artic...ion_in_freight_spend_in_6_months/case_studies

The system seeks to reduce freight costs by using the smallest number of trucks possible, all loaded to 2400 pieces. It's a good plan, but a couple of things go wrong. The first is that as stores have a larger or smaller number of pieces they get thrown together on different routes which deliver in a different order. As a result the delivery could come in the evening, most often during the middle of the night, or sometimes not until the following day. At the same time you'll constantly get a different crew. The second thing is that Dispatch never knows how many trucks they're going to need until about 10hrs before loading begins. Obviously that means it isn't a dependable paycheck for drivers with low seniority.

To tell you how haphazardly this thing was implemented, consider that PJ has one cardinal rule--EVERY store gets 2 deliveries EVERY week. Nearly every day of the 6 day week the optimizer would leave at least one stop off the routes in order to save money. As a result just building the loads in the computer was a 2-4hr ordeal which didn't even start until 17:00, six days per week.

 

I live a few miles from there Cranbury NJ ware house and there always looking for drivers -Friend of mine worked there and he only lasted a few months said the Trucks would break down all the time said he broke down and sat for 5-6 hrs up on Amsterdam Ave in NYC then he had to go and finish route -That and the fact that he was lumping pans of pizza dough that weigh 80-100lbs made him find better job -They and other places are hurting for drivers cuz who wants to do that work and drive in the city just driving alone in NYC is bad enough add to that the fact ur unloading heavy product by hand -I just quit a job where I was driving flatbed delivering steel to construction sites and metal fabercation shops all in Brooklyn and Queens what a pain in the butt plus I had a dispatcher who never drove a truck so he didnt grasp the fact that if theres one car parked where it shouldnt be ur not gonna make the turn and thats pretty much the story every where I went up there Ive had to back out of so many turns and try and make the cut with inches between me and car been up on sidewalks- peoples front yards lol what a life

 

This is the second time Ive come across this thread randomly on google. I know the OP. He's a good dude, but he's the kinda guy that needs a hug and a pat on the back after a hard days work or he gets pouty. He got fired for bringing applications from another job to our job. (He got fired from that job too later on after failing a drug test.)

Most everything in the thread is true, but exaggerated. They don't "force" you to do ####. People do dumb #### because it pays well. I made 93k last year with every weekend off. A couple crazy ######## made over 100k. I averaged about 52 hours for a 3 day work week and always asked management for extra work on my days off (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and enjoyed my weekends.

I'm 35 and have been there for 10 years. Seen lot of dudes come and go. It is definitely not for everyone. Some people could just never adjust to working nights. They'd get up at 6:00-7:00am take their kids to school do whatever all day, and come to work at 5:00pm, so then about 12:00-2:00AM they would be tired as #### and be half zombies when the job was only halfway done. So, they'd work slow as #### and if they had to drive back it was ####ing rough. Yes, we did run illegal as ####, but a lot of it had to do with this. This was also particularly a problem with the older guys like 40's/50's.

If you work hard and don't #### off, theres absolutely no reason you would do over 65 hours on 3 routes.