The Driver Helper Position
b'Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, we had a question from a young man interested in becoming a driver but he wasn\\u2019t excited about working his way up through the warehouse. He\\u2019d spoken with a friend that was a Driver Helper with a Foodservice Distribution Center, thought he\\u2019d like that work and was wondering could that be a pathway to becoming a successful delivery driver. My answer would be Absolutely! Marty here with WAOC and today we\\u2019ll explore a couple of different scenarios or starting points I\\u2019ve heard about that was great jobs to break into the transportation or delivery field.
\\nA Driver Helper position is pretty much just what it states. This person helps the driver with everything from loading the trailer, organizing the freight by stop, wheeling or dollying the product off the truck, into the stop, shelving the product at the customers to handling the invoices and accounting for any returns. The job varies by company, some organizations I know of may limit what all a Driver Helper can do but most the facilities I\\u2019m familiar with it\\u2019s the driver that directs the helper. I think the Driver Helper position is a great way to explore ones thoughts about being a delivery driver. As we spoke of in episode 22, the important thing is learning the product, which can be accomplished by handling it, handlining it in the warehouse or actually unloading it at the customer\\u2019s location right?
\\nDriver Helper is typically called or listed as a general labor position, and it\\u2019s a good job and one of the tasks I feel is an important job. But if I\\u2019m interested in driving it can also be a fantastic springboard to that Driving Career bringing with it a host of opportunities. As we\\u2019ve mentioned it will afford us a hands-on view of the Drivers job, learn something about customer service at the Account or Customer level, and this is an advantage over working in the warehouse approach something we can\\u2019t really get working from inside the warehouse. We\\u2019ll learn our Companies product line, the importance of the delivery & how to handle situations as they come up in the field.
\\nTo succeed in this position it\\u2019s important to follow the directions of our Driver, stay ahead of the stops regarding separating out the next stops product, stacking down the load to avoid damages and making it easy and efficient to check off the invoices, wheel the freight into the account and get back on the road as quickly and safely as possible. This is hard work, yep, there\\u2019s a lot of sitting and being still in between stops but when the trucks not moving we are, the works hard, we\\u2019re finger printing every case meaning picking up and moving every box, several times before getting it delivered, stored and signed for. Remember delivering it is only part of the job, the driver is responsible for the invoice and its payment as well!
\\nThere\\u2019s actually a rhythm and process that develops with a good helper and the driver, once a good, hard working helper is trained by a driver that driver will want to work with us all the time, I\\u2019ve seen drivers hold up their routes before to get their usual helper. And that\\u2019s the relationship we want right? We want them to share how hard of a worker and how knowledgeable we are with the management team! Again I want to mention how important it is to be on-time each and every shift we\\u2019re assigned too, particularly in this type of position as others are relying on us to start their task as well. Remember it\\u2019s important to BE the employee ready and able to get the job done right?
\\nAnother great thing about this position is training is not a long and drawn out procedure either, we\\u2019ll need to learn how to read the individual labels or invoices, depending what identifiers we\\u2019ll be using to find the next stops product, how to stack the items where the driver can just scoop up the stack with his/her two wheeler, maybe how to set up and attach a ramp on the trailer so the loaded two...'