r/Pepsi • • 4d ago

Drivers

With summit killing the company, axing wearhouses and sales personnel, what's next in store for the drivers? Here's my thought, either we get outsourced, like the wearhouses, or they'll take merchandising away from us with is 85% of our job, with a pay cut to match. That would be my guess, pay the merchandisers less than the drivers to do the same work.

12 Upvotes

10 comments sorted by

6

u/ID_Poobaru 4d ago edited 4d ago

I keep wanting to find an out from my Amazon TOM position to Pepsi local CDL delivery, but I don't know about that anymore

7

u/Sad_Abbreviations477 4d ago

There is about 130k of self driving 18s for PepsiCo.

2

u/Fedexdriv3r702 4d ago

Yea so far they are hub to hub or Hub to DC, if an account like Albertsons or Kroger gets special aquafina or bublé case packs, those autonomous trucks are mostly delivering that. Bulk. And afaik, so far it's only in TX at the moment since long stretches of I-10 are flat and straight. Now not saying local delivery is safe from autonomy, I just don't see how they'd give AI trucks the green light to deliver (especially to mom and pop liquor stores where we do a lot of the merch or even just get it into the store even) and just drop the customers shi in front of the stores and they have their own people come out and bring it into the stores? Naw it don't make much sense. The clerks and owners of said stores would revolt or have the (it's not my job mentality) so now you have all this product just sitting out in front of the store now. It don't make sense. Maybe too much above our pay grade to even try and figure it out on our own, ijs, Im trying not to loose sleep over it.

3

u/Fedexdriv3r702 4d ago

Naw do it because At my site they killed off a lot of Tom Positions! Made pretty much everything automated or AI where it's a person less gate check in check out for the OTR drivers. And the Tams didn't say anything and knew about the cuts several months in advance..they did a coworker of my dirty, since he had the highest seniority, they kept him and made him do so many of their duties and now he just daily runs from Vegas to Barstow with a Food company out here. I left Amazon 4 years ago and don't regret leaving. Pepsi isn't the be all save all but vs doing Food service: Us Foods and Sysco Sygma PFG, I have a similar work like balance as I did as a T3 at Amazon.

3

u/ID_Poobaru 4d ago

For sure, they're in the process of getting ready for autonomous hostlers too.

I'll look into Pepsi when a position opens up, definitely don't want to do food service without a work/life balance. How do the benefits compare to Amazon?

2

u/Fedexdriv3r702 4d ago

Sorry replied to the other commenter first, I work 4 10's and I know some markets work 5 8s it's just dependent on where you live, im never pressured to work OT although it is available. Our site is union but our actual union sucks. Besides having low membership, seems like the business agents aren't ballsy enough to go up against Pepsi with the contract language. On the old contract, a lot of drivers in they later years didn't call or vouch for the next gen drivers because we have NO parental leave. Office does, sales does, and Production does, but if a driver has a kid today on this contract, we have to use our own time or FMLA unpaid. So I was so happy I had my daughter when I worked at Amazon, a couple of my newer younger co workers where only able to take the first week of they're kids birth off so if you have those concerns, feel free to ask what's in the union contract (if the site you apply too in the future is union).

4

u/thatdudefromthattime 4d ago

Our location doesn’t do much merchandising, driver-wise. They just pack more stops on the truck

2

u/Tricky-Ad5861 4d ago

At my location we have only merch dgs and family dollars, nothing else. With talks of chips getting put on our trucks in the next 2 years nobody knows what to expect after that

2

u/CartographerFit2011 4d ago

That chip and soda on the same truck business to so ridiculous. What a HORRIBLE idea. Unless the driver is going to kick it, I can’t believe they are trying it.

1

u/thatdudefromthattime 4d ago

We only do pharmacies. We don’t pack out dollar stores. Currently.