Peapod Reviews

Let me give you a rundown of an average day of a driver.... First off you get a text the night before with your route number and start time (it sucks because it typically comes in around 9:30 and for morning drivers you can start as early as 4:30-5). The first thing you do when you show up is grab a hand cart. There are short ones and tall ones and some have lips that fold out. (A major issue I have is there are never enough big carts with lips so the earlier routes will have their pick). Then the dispatcher gives you a case with your route, a gps, cell phone, and clipboard with all the paperwork for your customers. The average stops per route is about 20, areas that are densely populated like Evanston or Chicago will almost always have more to the 22-25 stops and the rural areas have about 17-20. Now you can punch in 7 minutes prior to or after your start time which is nice but once you have punched in you have 10 minutes to check your truck for any damage, set up your gps and phone and drive off the lot. Every now and then the warehouse will be behind on loading your truck so you have to hang out and wait. It typically isint too long but every so often you will be an hour or more behind and that totally ruins your day. Anyways, you get to your route and once you get to a stop you punch a button on your cell phone that lets the dispatch center know you have arrived. They use this to track your progress throughout the day and lets the customer know via text that you have arrived. Then you find the boxes and load them onto the cart and bring the groceries. This is where it gets kind of annoying because the customer can put in special delivery instructions that you have to be sure to read and often times it makes the delivery much harder then it has to be. The other big problem I have is they often times do not give you enough time to do certain stops. Is is based on the past history of deliveries but a lot of people have different sized orders so the time is not always accurate. Plus when they make your route they never take into consideration other factors such as traffic, construction, nowhere to easily park, etc. If you hustle and work hard you can do it faster and earn a few minutes here and there but it only takes one mishap to easily lose 10 plus minutes and all your hard work is negated. You just keep going in order until your route is done so it is not complicated at all and they days actually do go by very fast but you are literally working all the time be it driving or delivering. You do get a 25 minute break but nobody takes it and instead use that extra time to try and stay ahead or finish early. One thing that absolutely drives everyone crazy is when the routing department intentionally cuts drive times between stops in order to fit in more stops into specific delivery windows. You end up finishing way behind and it just kills your morale but they want to squeeze as much as they can out of you. This happens pretty much every Saturday but most other days are ok as far as drive times go. When you finish and get back to the warehouse you track your mileage, check your truck for damage, return your cart and case with the provided items and go home. Like I mentioned earlier you get to leave when your route is over so once you get good at it you can routinely finish ahead of schedule. There are more specifics and things I won't go into but that is the gist of it. -Not all routes are created equal; different towns have better tipping customers and easier deliveries. These routes are given out by seniority and the top guys obviously get the best areas. -They preach safety and accuracy over efficiency so do not rush to the point where you get in accidents or miss items on the orders. Those who do get fired quickly and never last. The speed will come with experience and practice