Driving a truck professionally can be a tormented vocation. Truck driving schools enjoy manipulating new students in believing that over the road truck driving is an easy, laid-back lifestyle. At times, perhaps it can be, but for the most part it is a stressful, aggravating way of life. There are hundreds of thousands of pick-ups and deliveries made every day by our truckers and if you ask them which shipper and receiver is usually the worst to deal with, the answer will nearly always be the Grocery Warehouses.
I have never understood the management team of the grocery warehouses. You would think that management, lower to upper, would comprehend the main principle of business management . . . take care of the customer. Dealing with a grocery warehouse, primarily delivering, is most often the truck driver's worst nightmare. They purposely make you sit and wait for hours on end, and most often make you, the driver, perform the unloading.
Grocery warehouses are known for their over-powering, disrespectful and hateful attitudes. Many of them will treat the professional driver as something less than a dog. All you have to do is ask a driver that has been at it for a while . . . grocery warehouses are the worsts! These little managers that run the operation enjoy the feeling of power over the driver. This is the only reason I can imagine . . . what other reason would cause a "manager" to treat truck drivers this way?
Thus, this is where the management of these grocery warehouses are making their biggest mistake in managing. They may have the title of "management," but they are not true, professional managers. What is the Number 1 mistake enacted by these shippers and receivers? They see these men and women truck drivers as nothing but "lower-class." They treat them unfairly and many times with hostility. They abuse their management "powers" by making them sit and wait for hours on end, will take seven hours to unload a one hour shipment, and on and on.
