truck driver

production operator

tractor trailer driver

local driver

quality assurance technician

Oakhurst Dairy

I delivered milk at Oakhurst for 3.5 years. Let me describe how the pay and routes work and maybe you'll understand why I no longer work there. Oakhurst has a HUGE turnover rate for their drivers. They hire young drivers with minimal experience because they aren't really competitive with other driving companies.

A typical workweek is 4 days on, three off. Routes are "designed" to be 12 hours, although with practice you should generally get them down to about 11 hours. Pay is per day salary, so you get paid your set daily wage every time you drive a route. The issue is this pay is the same regardless of how many stops, or how much weight in milk you deliver. If you get the route times down they just add more stops. If your route times increase they don't remove any stops. Too bad for you.

Also you don't get paid for overtime. Not a dime. Since your weekly routes will usually range from 44 to 48 hours that's quite a lot of time extra you work. Sometimes you're required to work 5 days in a week. Enjoy working 60 hours with no overtime.

Oh and on top of that some days are just "heavy" delivery days. You know when Facebook is full of those "Hannaford bread and milk" memes right before a snow storm? Oh yeah, enjoy working 14 hours in a blizzard. Not a penny more paid to the employee.

Let's go through a typical day at work.

2:00 AM I wake up and stumble off to work. Oakhurst has no official start time which sounds nice, but in reality that just means "start as early as you feasibly can" because as the day starts you face traffic, both on the roads and in loading bays. 4 AM is considered a late start for me. 12 hour work days that start at 2 AM means you will start to get tired around 6-7 PM. If you have a social life... well, you won't anymore.

2:30 I grab my scanner and route assignment. At least half the time you will find extra stops on your route so it's usually worth it to check your schedule the night before. Depending on how far your route goes you will expect to have between 20-30 stops. Sometimes the route is assigned to the wrong truck which means I have to physically check each individual truck to see where the milk I'm supposed to deliver actually is. Sometimes production errors mean not all of the milk is loaded on my truck and I have to load it myself. Why make the paid per hour loaders do their job when they can make the salaried employee do it? Sometimes the previous employee didn't fuel up replace the DEF fluid, or maybe the loaders took your milk dolly / hook. Perhaps there's something terribly wrong with your truck, and neither the previous employee nor the loaders thought to mention it to anyone. Oh, the mechanics start their day at 5 AM on Monday so if you need any assistance before that... too bad. So many different ways for time to be wasted in the morning.

3:00 Truck is ready to go. Most people skip the pre-checks because again, this is a salaried job. Still it's worth it to quickly run around the truck and make sure everything is locked and the cargo is secure. The loaders frequently forget to secure the load bars and lift pins.

4:00 I make my first delivery at Hannaford. I find out that Hood has taken all the milk dollies (think of a U-boat but for milk) forcing me to spend 20 minutes re-arranging Hannaford's own milk so I can scrape together enough dollies to make the delivery. Hannaford receivers are usually pretty good, but Walmart is consistently awful. They have a "one truck at a time" policy that once led me to spend THREE HOURS waiting for a single truck to move so I could deliver. Oh speaking of which, when you're at the dock waiting to make a delivery you don't get paid. Remember that salary thing? If the receiver is on lunch you just sit there. Busy dock? You gotta wait. The receiver busy or just slow? You wait. And you get paid for none of it. Any extra stops on your route? Oops, now you can't get to the Shaws before they go on lunch and have to wait.

6:00 School delivery. The lunch lady officially starts at 6, but this particular lunch lady starts between 6:15 and 6:30. Sometimes I wait, sometimes not. Once in a while she starts at 7. Who knows?! Generally downtime can be used to organize the milk truck by pre-planning the next few stops but sometimes there's nothing you can do. Oh and just wait for the nightmare that is a school vacation. You still have to deliver the milk. Will the janitor be there? Maybe! Or will you have to backtrack later in the day because the janitor figured it would be okay to start at 10 am? Possibly. But you're salaried lol too bad.

8:00 Circle K. You bring the milk into the cooler and wait to get checked in. You wait... and wait... and wait. But more and more customers keep coming in. Eventually they go though the milk with you and, surprise surprise, all the milk is there. You wasted 15 minutes delivering a single stack of milk. Most gas stations have a "delivery door" but more often than not they don't have the key for it, or otherwise don't use it. So you're stuck moving your milk 5x the distance through the front door.

11:00 A medium size "mom and pop" store. They are "full service", meaning you make the order, stock the milk, and take back any expired milk. A large enough "full service" stop can take an hour. If you "share" a full service stop with another driver (ex. you go on Monday, they go on Thursday) it just turns into a game of who can do less work. Why should you spend 15 minutes extra delivering more milk when you can just deliver a small amount and compensate by giving the next driver a huge order. It's a system that benefits laziness and punishes hard work.

1:00 PM Your last stop is complete so you take 15 minutes to do inventory and head home. Oh but wait! It's a safety meeting! Instead of going home you wait until 2 when the meeting begins then sit through an hour and a half of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Literally nothing useful is every said at these meetings. It's just generic advice on how to avoid accidents (check your mirrors!) and company policy changes that could have been summed up in a single email. They don't pay you for these meetings (of course) but if you miss one they revoke your access to any sort of company safe driving bonuses. If the safety meeting happens to take place on your day off... too bad! You come in on your day off without pay. Such is the Oakhurst life.

tldr version. Oakhurst puts zero value on the free time of employees. It's a good starter trucking job but there's a reason they have such an abysmal employee retention rate.

Newer management and supervisors within the Distribution department. Good training and orientation program for new drivers. The job expectations and responsibilities are clearly spelled out. They gradually increase your work load and responsibilities instead of over working and throwing a new driver to the wolves after a minimal training period. Four day work week after training period is complete. 

The job does require off hours start times generally between 2-4am with some basic physical labor which between the two probably deters some people. You will always be done by mid-afternoon, sometimes earlier, and Sunday's off. 

You get to interact with a variety of customers throughout the day. 

Safety bonus if you meet the criteria, boot allowance and a variety of uniform choices. 3 weeks vacation ( more as seniority increases) even for newer employees after minimal set time on the job. 

If you are a responsible, hard working, committed individual this appears to be a company that appreciates such people.

Management is very negative especially upper management. They look down on everyone and talk down to you as well. They do not value skill and ability to do the work. Would rather have someone that puckers up for them. Poor work life balance, never know when your day is going to end. Pay is ok but there are places that you can make the same or more money. PTO is good, but the benefits cost a lot out of pocket.   Also they are owned by a huge corporation so you are just a number to them. Yes they have been around for a hundred years and much of their equipment in the dairy seems to have been there that long as well. They do not invest in infrastructure so things are breaking all the time. If you value your sanity stay away it is not a stressfree work place and there is a lot of backstabbing going on there. 

Only take this job if you are desperate. The hours are horrible, the pay is insulting, and the customers are rude. You get one weekday off and one weekend day off. They pay you salary and I did the math once I literally made 12$ a hour that week. They expect you to make orders for the customers on top of doing a grueling delivery job. My truck  was constantly breaking down. I could go on forever. 99% of their problem is they pay salary. They will never change that because it’s clearly a way to take advantage of their drivers. The only people who benefit from the salary are the local drivers. They will send you to rural New Hampshire and Massachusetts to make deliveries on salary. There’s so many better jobs than oakhurst and I definitely do not recommend working here 

So if you are in a straight truck you will hire on for a four day work schedule. They will force you to work the optional fifth day. If you don't they resent you and retaliate back by dumping stops and cases on you. 

They flaunt a promote from within mentality....but I saw two amazing drivers that were promised supervisor positions; while jumping through hoops to add get cheated out by someone off the street with no experience. 

The management promises lots but when the time comes they simply say sorry we can't. This is a stepping stone company go and get your a or b license then leave. The turnover is insane. A dime a dozen...drivers are a penny a dozen to Oakhurst. Good pays more just start there.

A typical day at work was to enter data into the system for monthly milk prices and learn the pricing guidelines. Assisted Sales team with customer information and addressed concerns.
I learned that working for a family-owned business is different than a corporate job.
The hardest part of the job was having a boss that yelled all the time.
The most enjoyable part of the job was the relationships I built with my colleagues.

Horrible place to work. Management doesn’t care if you need time off. If you do need a day off they try to make you go to Portland to run a route. If you say no they quilt trip you. The trucks are horrible. Maintenance on the vehicles is horrible. Trucks are loaded a mess. You have to dig through all the product just to find what your looking for. No organization what so ever. Management never has any of the drivers backs. All they care about is getting the route done no matter how long it takes you. There are better jobs out there then oakhurst. 

management (that's a laugh) here is horrible.  The bosses always pitting one cooler against another.  Drivers are not appreciated at all and the pay is horrible.  They are hiring new drivers and trying to drive out the few good ones they have left.  Want a day off?  Good luck. The bottom line with Oakhurst is you aren't appreciated, respected or treated like a human being.  Save yourself the pain and just go to Hood.  Same job almost twice the starting pay and you can be treated with at least a modicum of respect.

You are told you will start at a certain wage with room for a wage increase, they will hold any little thing against you in order for you not to receive this wage. You are told you will work a four day work schedule, they will cram the routes full if you do go on a four day 12+ hour days on a non hourly paid wage it will be a set salary so they can get the most out of you, they will usually force you to work a five day work week because they cannot keep any good help with there unreasonable job tasks.

Employees are constantly changing, staffing makes it so people are always doing multiple jobs. Good opportunity for growth within the company for hard working people. The family owned mentality stuck around after the purchase which makes it challenging to figure out how to deal with management and others. All hiring done through a temp service so employees tend to not care about what they are doing.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Truck driver 5 salaries reported	$1,420 per week
Production operator 2 salaries reported	$21.00 per hour
Tractor trailer driver 2 salaries reported	$32.00 per hour
Local driver 11 salaries reported	$1,327 per week
Quality assurance technician 1 salary reported	$26.00 per hour

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