Delivering low prices

Discount Store News, Oct, 1999

Charles Williams arrives at the loading dock of an Orlando, Fla.-area Wal-Mart discount store for his first delivery of the day only to find the bays are occupied by an empty Wal-Mart trailer and a Pepsi truck. It's not the best way to start a day in which had weather is forecast and Williams' tight schedule calls for driving 440 miles in heavy traffic to three different stores and several backhaul locations.

Before the store can receive its merchandise, Williams has to disconnect the 53-ft. trailer he's brought to the store and reconnect it to the empty trailer to pull it out of the way. He disconnects the empty, reconnects the original load and backs the trailer to the dock with the Pepsi truck parked about 18 inches from the passenger's side. He disconnects again, reconnects to the empty trailer, does some paperwork and is on his way. All in less than 10 minutes.

"I could have made him move, but it's simpler to do it this way," Williams said. "The stores are our customers, and Wal-Mart gives us a good piece of equipment to drive. We just go out and do it in a safe and efficient manner."

Safety and efficiency are the operative words. Williams and the dozens of other Wal-Mart drivers he encounters during the day don't say, "See you later." With them, "Be careful" is the standard farewell. They use it when signing off the GB radio or when leaving a distribution center or backhaul location. It takes less than an hour on the road with Williams to appreciate the gravity of the comment.

Four-wheelers, trucker slang for cars, are accidents waiting to happen. Williams' viewpoint from 10 feet above the road reveals just how poorly people drive. Williams has five mirrors of various shapes to offer every conceivable view of the right side of his truck.

Williams has driven more than 1.2 million accident-free miles during a l0-year career with Wal-Mart. During his 30-year driving career, he's only had one accident, which wasn't his fault. Williams' safety record, while exceptional, isn't out of the ordinary among the 5,132 Wal-Mart drivers that will log a combined total of more than 455 million miles this year. Drivers can't get on at Wal-Mart unless they have 300,000 accident-free miles to their name. They have to take a defensive driver refresher course each year, and there are variety of incentives, financial and otherwise, for logging safe miles.

On this day, Williams exchanges plenty of "Be carefuls" via his GB radio with other Wal-Mart drivers he encounters every few minutes. Florida is crawling with Wal-Mart trucks. The retailer has 172 stores in the state, most of which get general merchandise shipments from Williams and the 167 other drivers he works with who are based at a l.7-million-sq.-ft. distribution center about an hour north of Tampa just off Interstate 75.

Wal-Mart's business is booming, and the retailer's private fleet, long recognized as a competitive advantage, will drop as many as five trailers of goods at some of the highest-volume stores. Smaller stores may get a truck every other day. Considering the number of Wal-Mart trucks on Florida's roads, it's not surprising Williams sees a fellow driver at a freight consolidator where he's picking up a load of vendor merchandise. The other driver's decides to follow Williams' back to the distribution center.

After some banter on the GB, both men grow concerned about how the trailers they picked up hadn't been sealed and weren't padlocked. It's a serious oversight on the part of the consolidator, and they agree to raise the issue with their supervisor.

Along the heavily traveled, two-lane, 53-mile route the appearance of other Wal-Mart trucks has become a routine occurrence. There are a lot of other trucks on this road, as well, including some Williams is wary of. "Rock haulers" is what the Wal-Mart drivers call the open-top trucks carting various earthen materials. Their drivers often violate speed limits and don't maintain their vehicles.

When a couple of rock haulers approach off a side road a quarter mile away, Williams quickly keys his mike to alert his fellow driver in case "they decide to pop the clutch" and pull on the road.

Wal-Mart drivers themselves are the subject of some generalizations by their peers. "Some of the other drivers think we are stuck up because we don't holler back at them on the radio. We pretty much stick to the low side of 19," Williams said, referring to the lower-frequency range of channel 19 traditionally used by truckers. "We stay off of 19 because it's mostly a bunch of garbage going on."

Other Wal-Mart drivers offer that non-Wal-Mart drivers are also envious because Wal-Mart drivers don't get dirty.

"We drop, hook and drive. We don't load and unload," Williams said. "If we had to do that it would just take away hours that we could be out here rolling freight up and down the highway."

Wal-Mart drivers can also he a source of irritation to other truckers, especially those in a hurry.

William's Navistar series 60 Detroit with a 12-speed Road Ranger transmission is programmed to a top speed of 65, which is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the drivers' collective safety record. On the few opportunities Williams has to reach top speed, 65 seems very slow.