jerry-jones
Seasoned Expediter
I delivered newspapers when I was 12 years old
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POLL: Did You Have ANY Delivery Experience BEFORE Expediting
- Thread starter Brisco
- Start date
jimlookup
Seasoned Expediter
First job after army I hauled newspapers for the old Chicago Hearld American. Spent most of the next 40 years delivering, shipping and receiving freight in Chicago area. Delivered cab & chasis to Freuhauf for equipment instalation; then delivered finished product to dealer or customer. Delivered people in a taxi cab. Did a couple gigs as a bartender delivering drinks.
A delivery driver spends his day in the same town, or general region, doing things such as delivering packages to office buildings and such.
An OTR driver is more involved in the driving than the delivery. And, that delivery will generally be to a forklift driver that will stage the materials for production. A much less personal thing than handing someone a package they've been waiting for.
As expediters, I see us as something of a hybrid. I sometimes have that package that someone's been waiting for, I sometimes have production materials.
Mind you, this is just an opinion from someone that's actually an expediter. YMMV...
I drove delivering hanging beef in tractor 40-45' trailers back then and straights to stores...and ALL hand unload. Then did post office contractor gig, split shifts in a 22/24' straight. Then unto the newspaper gig at night to different cities...
There is nothing scientific, accurate or reliable about most internet polls and certainly not about this one. There are a number of former white-collar or office-job workers who now work as expediters but do not participate in the Open Forum.
Of the ones I know, none of them entered the business on a whim. They researched the business and prepared well. That is one of the main reasons why someone from a white collar background can enter and succeed in the business without prior truck driving or delivery experience. They have developed a skill set that serves them well in both domains. Once the move is made, the driving and freight handling is easily learned.
It is not a good idea to develop generalizations about any person or group in this industry. An amazingly wide variety of people are entering and leaving this business in any given month. What is true of one or of a few will not be true for the others.
When it comes to understanding the business of expediting, I think it is better to appreciate the individuality of people in the business than it is to lump people into groups and conclude that you know something about the people you decided belong in this category or that.
In other words, there is no such thing as the typical expediter.
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You unloaded by yourself? I delivered swinging beef to Kroger every week and couldn't imagine handling that trailer full, picking up the hooks was enough.
Never did a trailer by myself....only a 22-24 ft straight of hanging fronts and hinds, driving from store to store was the easy part! There's a trick to getting them off the hooks...
gatorfan068
Active Expediter
Yes,I drove a straight truck delivering hardwood flooring in Florida,Georgia,and South Carolina,delivered dry ice in Florida,delivered AC equipment in Florida,drove T/T hauling empty beer bottles from a warehouse to the Budweiser plant in Jacksonville Florida,and convoyed 2 1/2 and 5 ton military vehicles with personnel. I drove a 8 yard concrete mixer in Maumee Ohio. : P
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gatorfan068
Active Expediter
Oops I missed one...I drove tandum and multi axle dump trucks hauling sand,stone,concrete,and fill dirt,at that time for a company in Swanton Ohio. I had to end that job when I got a 11,000 pound over ticket in Wood County by Bowling Green Ohio. Which resulted in a truck inspection by DOT and a $804.00 fine Ouchhhhh : (
RoadKing06
Expert Expediter
Gatorfan, was that Swanton Company, Al Mackey Trucking? I drove a small dump for them for about a month. Driving was easy it was having to clean the dump out to change from dirt to sand or stone, etc. I was a much younger, smaller woman at that time and thought I was strong but I couldn't handle all that shoveling in the heat. Wasn't my cup of tea. Lol
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Brisco
Expert Expediter
Well....I'm not voting even though I did start this "unscientific" poll. Reason being...should be well known....I'm not in Expediting!!! (Duh )
But since everyone's sharing experiences.......
I too delivered Newspapers in my childhood on a bicycle. Tried to do it on my Go-Cart, but that only lasted 2 days. For some reason, people just didn't like a go-cart blaring through the neighborhood at 6AM in the morning. And, it took 3 Cop Cars to make their point clear.
My Father was the first to bring the Dallas Morning New and the Ft Worth Star Telegram to West Texas in the 70's, so I delivered those papers too before school and on weekends for a while. Did the Pizza delivery gig too for about a month while going to Tech. (Good Looking girls worked at all the Pizza Places back then)
After the Military, delivered Cleaning Supplies and Chemicals all over West Texas for a while. (full blown Class A w/Hazmat) Here in the DFW area since 1989 or so, I've tried the Commissioned Courier gig, delivered Auto Parts and Auto Paint locally for a while and with a couple of different companies, ran a "Federal Reserve" route in North Texas, which also included a few "Lab Specimen" pick-ups and deliveries, ran a 3PL Auto Parts Route all throughout Texas and the surrounding 5 states, have delivered new RV Trailers all over the country for the Manufacturers up there in Indiana, and worked as a Contract Transport Driver for FEMA picking up and delivering FEMA trailers all over the Southern Portions of the country after Katrina hit.
Total Miles unknown, but I guarantee that it's probably up in the 600-700K range, if not higher. (Hell, I put 180K miles on my '04 Cummins in a 2 year time period alone) So I've had some "windshield" time in my life. Looking to get back behind the windshield again here real soon too.
Wish that CV Expediting was more lucrative than what I see here. I'd love to get a truck just as the Chef just bought and hit the road again. But, there's other venues in trucking that pay 2-3 times better than what that truck will bring in while staying under 26K, so I'm just going to put Expediting off on the side for now.
)But since everyone's sharing experiences.......
I too delivered Newspapers in my childhood on a bicycle. Tried to do it on my Go-Cart, but that only lasted 2 days. For some reason, people just didn't like a go-cart blaring through the neighborhood at 6AM in the morning. And, it took 3 Cop Cars to make their point clear.
My Father was the first to bring the Dallas Morning New and the Ft Worth Star Telegram to West Texas in the 70's, so I delivered those papers too before school and on weekends for a while. Did the Pizza delivery gig too for about a month while going to Tech. (Good Looking girls worked at all the Pizza Places back then)
After the Military, delivered Cleaning Supplies and Chemicals all over West Texas for a while. (full blown Class A w/Hazmat) Here in the DFW area since 1989 or so, I've tried the Commissioned Courier gig, delivered Auto Parts and Auto Paint locally for a while and with a couple of different companies, ran a "Federal Reserve" route in North Texas, which also included a few "Lab Specimen" pick-ups and deliveries, ran a 3PL Auto Parts Route all throughout Texas and the surrounding 5 states, have delivered new RV Trailers all over the country for the Manufacturers up there in Indiana, and worked as a Contract Transport Driver for FEMA picking up and delivering FEMA trailers all over the Southern Portions of the country after Katrina hit.
Total Miles unknown, but I guarantee that it's probably up in the 600-700K range, if not higher. (Hell, I put 180K miles on my '04 Cummins in a 2 year time period alone) So I've had some "windshield" time in my life. Looking to get back behind the windshield again here real soon too.
Wish that CV Expediting was more lucrative than what I see here. I'd love to get a truck just as the Chef just bought and hit the road again. But, there's other venues in trucking that pay 2-3 times better than what that truck will bring in while staying under 26K, so I'm just going to put Expediting off on the side for now.
Besides my paper route when I was a kid the ONLY other "delivery" experience I have was when I was running ambulance. I helped to "delivery" a healthy, bouncing baby girl in the family's living room!
It was hilarious (not) when my oldest son, while a young lad, performed that very good-samaritan service for his multiple customers by disposing of their advertising-flyer-trash in an inappropriate dumping area for which he did not have permission to do so and subsequently got his arse fired from his paper route.
There has got to be a correlation in there somewhere
DannyD
Veteran Expediter
I delivered pizzas, worked for a messenger/courier company, & if ya count newspapers when I was a kid, that too.
The messenger job was in Chicago. I used my car, not a bike. That one was brutal. I had delivered pizzas before here in Michigan & went back to it-in a suburb of Chicago- after trying the messenger gig. Good move. I'd make as much in 3 hours of running pizzas as I did all day as a messenger. On the days I got to close I really cleaned up.
What I never understood was the stigma of the pizza driver. Back when I was delivering there were only a few places in each town. There weren't 25 places in every city like there are today. We'd have maybe 20-25 deliveries a day, make almost $3 per tip + $1 for the run. Then add in the hourly rate. We were usually able to average 4 deliveries per hour.
One place I worked at we got 6 per hour a lot of times. Getting hours there was tough because the 2 guys w/ seniority weren't going to give em up, so I rarely got to close. Even so, I had many days where I might work 3-4 hours & make $75.
Yet people would say "you deliver pizzas?" w/ a tone in their voice like you were doing some menial job. Before all these places popped up & spread out all the deliveries it used to be a pretty good job. I never did get why people had that attitude towards an honest job.
The messenger job was in Chicago. I used my car, not a bike. That one was brutal. I had delivered pizzas before here in Michigan & went back to it-in a suburb of Chicago- after trying the messenger gig. Good move. I'd make as much in 3 hours of running pizzas as I did all day as a messenger. On the days I got to close I really cleaned up.
What I never understood was the stigma of the pizza driver. Back when I was delivering there were only a few places in each town. There weren't 25 places in every city like there are today. We'd have maybe 20-25 deliveries a day, make almost $3 per tip + $1 for the run. Then add in the hourly rate. We were usually able to average 4 deliveries per hour.
One place I worked at we got 6 per hour a lot of times. Getting hours there was tough because the 2 guys w/ seniority weren't going to give em up, so I rarely got to close. Even so, I had many days where I might work 3-4 hours & make $75.
Yet people would say "you deliver pizzas?" w/ a tone in their voice like you were doing some menial job. Before all these places popped up & spread out all the deliveries it used to be a pretty good job. I never did get why people had that attitude towards an honest job.
It isn't so much an attitude toward honest work, so much as it is wondering how someone could survive as a pizza delivery guy for a career.
I often wondered how much people tip pizza delivery guys because I used to know someone who was doing that for additional income at one time and the people in that city were CHEAP. It was an affluent city too! MANY times he would get zilch.
Worked in the Rent to Own business in the day time and Domino's Pizza at night. Back then you had to get the pizza to the customer within 30 mins or it was free. The cost of the pizza was higher to off set the ones that was free. Most of the time we had 20 mins to get it to the customers house from the store. We could only go 2.5 miles from the store, so how could you be late? New drivers was always getting lost and being late.
Pirate2X
Active Expediter
I have delivered pizzas on and off for years whenever things were slow when I was in business. Great way to learn surroundings!
As for the income, its all about the area. In GA, 2 different cities, I would average about 450 a week, In Panama City most nights were over 100, so I averaged 600 a week.
I don't know about you, but that's more than I make currently as a percentage expedite driver. But I love my job, things will get better!