The article is a bit repetitive and doesn't quite answer the question, but here are some interesting bits: ... ... ... ...
The article is a bit repetitive and doesn't quite answer the question, but here are some interesting bits:
[Walmart's] leadership team couldn’t find anyone to haul freight to its first stores. Walmart operated mostly in the boondocks, far from where most trucking companies wanted to go.
“We couldn’t find anybody who wanted to run their trucks 60 or 70 miles out of the way into these little towns where we were operating,” Don Sonderquist, an early Walmart executive, explained in an interview published in 1992. “We were totally ignored by the distributors and the jobbers. [...]"
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Paying truck drivers top dollar also makes sense because Walmart doesn’t employ that many of them. The company has about 14,000 truck drivers and 1.6 million associates. Each of those truck drivers holds a lot of power over the shopping experience of a Walmart store.
“One associate here or there can have a positive impact, but it’s not going to change the economics of the store,” Fishman said. “A truck driver is going to really matter. They have an outsized impact on the way the company runs.”
Paying six figures to 14,000 employees may seem reasonable enough for Walmart. “It’s not even 1% of their staff,” Fishman said.
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Walmart is now changing its truck driver hiring policies. Until 2022, the company required 30 months of driver experience before one could be considered for the company driver role. That year, the company began piloting a program that allowed Walmart associates to go to a 12-week driver training program and become fleet drivers. Walmart expanded the program nationwide. (Outside applicants still need 30 months of training, and not every associate who applies is admitted to the program.)
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From the perspective of these supply chain experts, it doesn’t seem like the associate-to-driver program is necessarily a way to cut costs. Gibson said Walmart has been “very aggressive” in recruiting drivers in recent years. It may have simply tapped out of the current supply of drivers.
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“You take somebody who’s been with another company, they’ve developed habits, they’ve developed styles, they know certain systems – for the good and the bad,” Gibson said. “If they’ve developed any bad habits over time, you can train your new drivers the way you want, the way you need on your systems and try to focus on the skills, capabilities and safety issues that are directly of importance to your organization.”
The article is a bit repetitive and doesn't quite answer the question, but here are some interesting bits:
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