“Pizza delivery drivers typically are more experienced drivers, and a manager often will drive a route with a new driver to familiarize the person with the territory”
Huh?? I used to be a delivery driver when I was a kid. The other drivers & I were all completely inexperienced. We drove our own cars which were all dilapidated, we worked for a Syrian immigrant who drank a bottle of tequila and smoked a carton a day in the back room, and our training consisted of, well, absolutely nothing.
We weren’t road tested, in fact he never even asked for a drivers license or insurance cert.
Maybe the formalized training is the “Domino’s Way” but I would claim that lots of the sole prop’s out there have inadequate control of the non-owned auto exposure.
Matt:
You nailed it with that last post. I too was a delivery driver and can vouch for your post. Believe it or not, it was one of the more fun jobs i’ve had but then again, we were far from mature or anything considered “experienced” drivers. Hell…we used to have contests to see who could make deliveries the fastest…which always involved driving like lunatics.
I did however have the displeasure of managing a Domino’s pizza store back when I was in college. They did a quick “inspection” of the drivers vehicles but that was about it. Occassionally you’d go on a ride along but it was rare. While I wouldn’t consider this “adequate” it was light years ahead of the privately owned places I worked at…like the ones you mentioned.
“Willis, which has been specializing pizza parlors for more than 25 years, provides coverage for approximately 5 percent of the 65,000 pizza restaurants nationwide.”
Two and a half decades specializing in a niche, and that’s ALL Willis writes?
In 1980 I was working for Subaru of America and the zone office I worked in sold a fleet of bare bones Subaru hatchbacks to Dominoes in Zanesville, Ohio. We had to replace a number of transmissions because the delivery drivers were speed shifting the 4-speed gearboxes (trying to chirp the tires into 2nd and 3rd gear) and some of the drivers had never driven a stick shift before.
We shortened the shift levers which made it much harder to speed shift. After 2 years (I think) the engines started failing.We discovered that at least some of the cars had never had an oil change and the original factory oil filters were still on the cars. Even when the oil level went down no one thought to add oil to the engines.
This gave Subaru a bad reputation in Zanesville but I think the drivers had a blast slowly destroying our cars.
Well i can’t comment on any suby fleet vehicles but I can say I’ve seen just about every sort of stupid behavior involving a pizza delivery person and a car you could imagine.
I think the best was the time I answered the phone and it was one of my drivers telling me “go outside in 1 minute” (this was about 1am on a weekend and this particular pizza place was in the corner of a huge parking lot that was totally empty at the time)
Here comes the driver in an Olds Alero (brand new model at the time) doing about 60mph through the parking lot, yanks the ebrake and drifts into a parking spot like Ace Ventura.
As this story demonstrates, most pizza delivery drivers exhibit sound and rational driving behavior :)
I delivered out in the PA countryside and in the 6 years I delivered, I racked up 200,000 plus miles. I would argue that driving fast on country roads, some with impaired faculties (many were high), and delivering a pizza without the cheese being shifted (from hard acceleration/braking) had me well above my age group in driving experience.
So I agree with the statement that the drivers tend to be more experienced. We were on the road so much, we learned at a young age, many of the issues one can encounter on the road. You learned to watch out for little kids darting out of their yard, the dog running away, the little old lady walking in the middle of the road. If this soft market continues much longer, I will put on my Dominoes Pizza hat in a second and challenge the blacktop!!!!! :)
“Pizza delivery drivers typically are more experienced drivers, and a manager often will drive a route with a new driver to familiarize the person with the territory”
Huh?? I used to be a delivery driver when I was a kid. The other drivers & I were all completely inexperienced. We drove our own cars which were all dilapidated, we worked for a Syrian immigrant who drank a bottle of tequila and smoked a carton a day in the back room, and our training consisted of, well, absolutely nothing.
We weren’t road tested, in fact he never even asked for a drivers license or insurance cert.
Maybe the formalized training is the “Domino’s Way” but I would claim that lots of the sole prop’s out there have inadequate control of the non-owned auto exposure.
Matt:
You nailed it with that last post. I too was a delivery driver and can vouch for your post. Believe it or not, it was one of the more fun jobs i’ve had but then again, we were far from mature or anything considered “experienced” drivers. Hell…we used to have contests to see who could make deliveries the fastest…which always involved driving like lunatics.
I did however have the displeasure of managing a Domino’s pizza store back when I was in college. They did a quick “inspection” of the drivers vehicles but that was about it. Occassionally you’d go on a ride along but it was rare. While I wouldn’t consider this “adequate” it was light years ahead of the privately owned places I worked at…like the ones you mentioned.
Boy those were the days.
“Willis, which has been specializing pizza parlors for more than 25 years, provides coverage for approximately 5 percent of the 65,000 pizza restaurants nationwide.”
Two and a half decades specializing in a niche, and that’s ALL Willis writes?
Who’s targeting this class – blind producers?
In 1980 I was working for Subaru of America and the zone office I worked in sold a fleet of bare bones Subaru hatchbacks to Dominoes in Zanesville, Ohio. We had to replace a number of transmissions because the delivery drivers were speed shifting the 4-speed gearboxes (trying to chirp the tires into 2nd and 3rd gear) and some of the drivers had never driven a stick shift before.
We shortened the shift levers which made it much harder to speed shift. After 2 years (I think) the engines started failing.We discovered that at least some of the cars had never had an oil change and the original factory oil filters were still on the cars. Even when the oil level went down no one thought to add oil to the engines.
This gave Subaru a bad reputation in Zanesville but I think the drivers had a blast slowly destroying our cars.
Well i can’t comment on any suby fleet vehicles but I can say I’ve seen just about every sort of stupid behavior involving a pizza delivery person and a car you could imagine.
I think the best was the time I answered the phone and it was one of my drivers telling me “go outside in 1 minute” (this was about 1am on a weekend and this particular pizza place was in the corner of a huge parking lot that was totally empty at the time)
Here comes the driver in an Olds Alero (brand new model at the time) doing about 60mph through the parking lot, yanks the ebrake and drifts into a parking spot like Ace Ventura.
As this story demonstrates, most pizza delivery drivers exhibit sound and rational driving behavior :)
I delivered out in the PA countryside and in the 6 years I delivered, I racked up 200,000 plus miles. I would argue that driving fast on country roads, some with impaired faculties (many were high), and delivering a pizza without the cheese being shifted (from hard acceleration/braking) had me well above my age group in driving experience.
So I agree with the statement that the drivers tend to be more experienced. We were on the road so much, we learned at a young age, many of the issues one can encounter on the road. You learned to watch out for little kids darting out of their yard, the dog running away, the little old lady walking in the middle of the road. If this soft market continues much longer, I will put on my Dominoes Pizza hat in a second and challenge the blacktop!!!!! :)
Who cares. SAINTS WIN BABY!!!!!!!!!
It does seem a little low a %. But I’d take 3200 pizzeria policies