After they acquired Dierks Waukesha, the company went into a downward spiral. Management began to lose control of the organization. This was more than just growing pains. Every day turned into a fourteen hour day. I was working 65+ hours in four days and being asked to work off days. Keys to customers locations were being lost. When I reported to my supervisor that I did not have the keys for my first two stops, he replied, "No body cares anymore." There is poor communication between other departments and transportation resulting in critical information not reaching the driver. An example of this is a customer changed his door and lock. They put the new key in the mail box. The sales rep knew this, but never bothered to tell transportation so the driver would know. So you waste an hour playing phone tag to find out the key was there the whole time.
For various reasons, a lot of the management that was at US Foods prior to the acquisition decided to leave the company. The result was that a lot of the management that was at Dierks Waukesha (the company that failed) ended up in management at US Foods after the acquisition. The ironic part of this is that I worked at Dierks Waukesha and left because the place was a soup sandwhich. After the management came over, it looked more and more like Dierks Waukesha every day.
I began to experience the transportation manager and other supervisors asking me to violate company policies.
Routes began to decline in quality. I heard a number of drivers who had been there upwards of twenty years or more comment that they had never seen the place so bad.
The few weeks prior to me leaving, about five other drivers also quit.
A lot of the operational problems are the result of not properly staffing the place. There is a lot of turnover because it's a very physical, hands on job. Not many people are willing to stay there because there are too many other trucking jobs that are local, no touch, and pay well enough that it's difficult to justify staying there long.
When one driver quit, the work load increased for everyone else. It created a domino effect where each driver quitting became the breaking point for other drivers.
There was also zero truth in routing. I started each day by looking at my route to figure out all the mistakes I had to fix. I would be given an hour and fifteen minutes to make a drive that takes at least two hours. We were always scheduled to make deliveries outside of customer's delivery windows. Routes cannot be scheduled to exceed fourteen hours, so they manipulate the times to keep the route times down.
Cameras in the trucks and stupid policies about them like not being able to take a drink of water when the truck is moving (even in parking lots).
There is very little opportunity for career advancement if you're looking to get into management.
