i would like some views and experiences and any useful info on working for these guys, at the moment i am class2 multi drop have been doing this foe 6months as was given a start however as i hold class1 i think i may be a lot better off trying to get with one of these, after xmas. i am grateful for the experience where i am the hours are long and hard work but the money is ok, but you definately earn it. i dont really like the wage structure of a basic and the rest made up of bonuses and the job an finish sounds good but doesnt work in the drivers favour they all worj through theyre tacho breaks and call an early finish a 9 hour day!. anyway dont want to moan about that i just would like less handball !!! at the moment its off with the cage or cages up stairs an into kitchen store rooms etc. and a lot of health and safety issues that if a hse inspector saw , i think my firm would be in trouble. anyhow any info or experiences in the above companies would be of great knowledge, i am not interested in agencies as i have a mortgage an family! i heard that tescos only take you on via the agency an if you are good enough they may take you on sometime, a bit of a gamble? plus i plan to stay where i am till after xmas as wouldnt want to be used just for xmas!
Sainsburyâs and Morrisonâs are probably the least labour intensive of the lot.
lol thanx i didnt want to sound like i dont like to work! i dont mind hard graft but i like it safe and within the law, at the moment on multidrop, i have @25 cages on board belonging to various companies , none are owned by my national employer! but say we go to a drop that say they would like the cages to unpack themselves and check and then the idea is we swap over cages next time, initially i the driver am charged ÂŁ3 per cage allthough they are not exactly lost? also i see this as good customer relations as they are always saying we are 1st point of contact and to keep the customer happy. also we are expected to unpack the cage and put into the store room if thats what the customer wants, this can be as much as a 100m cage push with wonky wheels or flat edge wheels caused by seized wheels, then we either have to get in a lift or climb stairs more than 3 flights sometimes. this gets a bit much sometimes with 30 drops and over 1000 items being handballed, turns into a 13hour day with no overtime just a small bonus per drop after 16 drops of ÂŁ1.50 per drop and 5p for every item after 500. sometimes i envy these tipper drivers!!! lol but then again i pass these tesco sainsbury and iceland trucks and think i bet they dont do what i do haha!
Can I have your job when you move on; Pleaseâ â ?..I need to lose a bit more weight anyway!! 
LOL
I can relate to an extent about the issue with cages, I worked for a while on the CEVA logistics NHS contracts. Iâm now on multidrop class 2 but itâs all palletised goods. These can still cause H&S problems though as some drops donât have forklifts, therefore you have to tail-lift the pallet off. This becomes a major problem when youâve got pallets that weigh as much as a car. Two of our drivers have fallen off the tail-lifts in two weeks - one narrowly avoided being crushed by the falling pallet and pump truck and the other woke up in hospital after his fall and couldnât drive for two weeks as he was dizzy.
Iâve had a few close shaves myself. My backâs been aching all week but especially today as I had to deliver a ton of topsoil on a pallet and a ton of bricks. There was a lot of struggling over rough ground involved and it can really take its toll on your body. Driving a EuroCargo designed for short drivers with a cheap drivers seat with no lumbar support doesnât help matters either.
This jobâs pretty badly paid too⌠but what choice to I have? Thereâs no other work out there for me with my limited experience.
Iâm looking forward to getting my class 1 license, hopefully soon, and finding some safer work.
Moan over!
As for Iceland @ Warrington a mate of mine worked for them and says it is hard graft on the lines of what you are doing now i.e. multi-drop but with the added bonus of you might have 4 or 5 drops only, but you have to take ALL your drops off at the first one then put it all back on again (without any help btw) to get to the frozen at each drop! and if you have a 40ft trailer think about the work involved moving something like 20 pallets round on a reducing load.
Not in my opinion a nice scenario as regards work and btw I am not a workshy person but this is beyond a joke!
Sainsburyâs is really easy as far as labour is concerned when youâre docked, depending on what youâre delivering, and which rdc youâre working from, as some of the rdcâs only deal with certain goods. Stoke and Stone are 2 good examples of this, where the Stone rdc only deals with frozen goods, which are all on cages, and the slow moving or âK-Lineâ products shipped by Stoke, which come on either cages or dollies of totes. With the bigger rdcâs, it can depend on what time of the day (or night) youâre delivering. During the day, it will be mostly (or all) palletised, and the guys on the back door will do all the tipping with their electric pallet trucks, which means you wonât have to do any work at all, but overnight, youâll be doing a good proportion of chilled delivering, which is also all on cages. You may also get asked to help with the backloading of cages/salvage at times, but in general itâs fairly relaxed driving, other than getting your truck into some of the tighter local stores. The vast majority of rdcs are contracted to external logistics companies, which means youâll have to either find their agency or apply to them directly, possibly via the rdc itsself. If you give me an idea of where you are looking at working, i can give you details of who the operator is, and possibly what kind of vehicles you are likely to be driving.
BTW, i work as a goods in guy for sainsburyâs atmâŚ
The Tesco depot in Harlow is only fresh/frozen I believe and only having worked at Thurrock which is ambient I can only comment on that but guess the routine is pretty much the same at both. All the stuff as said is in cages, some of which can be heavy and not stacked all that well! Chuck in a duff wheel too and it can be abit of hard work getting the odd cage off. You only wheel them out the back/onto tail-lift then store bloke takes over. Once tipped just load up with empties or RSU if there is any and go back.
One drop per trailer for Extra stores ect but you could get a trailer with 4 or so stores on it but with only a couple of cages per drop.
My shifts are roughly 9-10 after they deduct 45 for your break which they dont pay on agency.
I wish I was on the trolly-dollying. All those lovely flat delivery areas? After some of the drops we have to go to it would seem like a holiday even if I had to single handedly empty out a double decker trailer. The big advantage is there is minimal handball, we drop and go.