There is a narrative that Wal-mart pays low wages, I think its quite apt as most positions do pay quite low, I worked at Wal Mart while in college and saw it first hand. A few things to note, certain positions do pay well, store managers for one, I know for a fact that over 20 years ago certain store managers would see over $300k in yearly compensation. In addition once I got into tech after college I worked with a few walmart.com ex-employees, and these employees stated that part of their bonus was tied to a percentage of sales walmart.com made and they said the bonus pay was wildly lucrative. So Wal Mart does pay well in fact if you are in the right position. Considering keeping your shelves(and online distribution centers) stocked is the lifeblood of the company it behooves them to have a healthy circulatory system and not have drivers who do not deliver on time or get into accidents.
A lot of people aren't factoring in that truckers can work 60 hours a week and are exempted from overtime pay and a lot of companies paying the big bucks in trucking are paying that much because they are maximizing the hours to minimize driver count (health insurance, benefits costs don't scale by hour).
Here is the money quote that makes the most sense to me:
“They wanted to pay them good money because it was the absolute core of their, of their business — to get this stuff from the distribution center to the store at precisely the right time with no screw-ups,” Lichtenstein said. “That was crucial.”<p>I am sure that WalMart demands full compliance with all regulations and is very exacting in pick up and delivery times. Likely drives are doing the same routes all the time. A lot of drivers would find that boring.
Walmart is one of the few trucking companies IIRC that slipseats (shares) their sleeper cabs, which means you're continually going to be changing the truck you drive and live in weekly. That kinda sucks.
Answer: They don't<p><a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walmart-Truck-Driver-Salaries-E715_D_KO8,20.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walmart-Truck-Driver-Salari...</a><p>Looks like top reported are at $75k.
How does Amazon pay its truck drivers? They seem like the closest comparison, with their own distribution system. Amazon's reputation is treating employees poorly, but maybe truck drivers are valued.
I also think part of equation is retention. You want to keep the drivers as them leaving might disturb deliveries. Specially if they are JIT. Inventory not at store does not sell.
Here was a recent and (somewhat) related post about the trucking industry and training for a CDL in Texas [0]. A very interesting read about both the macro environment and the particulars of several people looking to enter this career.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39046904">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39046904</a>
This is pretty grueling work requiring you to operate heavy machinery, be away from your family for days, and drive mundane hour after hour.<p>Why wouldn’t it be highly paid?
Already, several comments saying how being a truck driver is a tough job (it is!) or "that's what they have to pay to get decent drivers". But whether the job is hard, isn't the question, and the second comment is sort of vaguely accurate, but just ignores the interesting part. From the article:<p>> One of the best jobs you can get in trucking is at Walmart. The uber-retailer says truck drivers can make up to $110,000 in their first year at the company. That’s twice the nationwide median pay of a truck driver<p>The interesting question is: why does Walmart pay so much more than is typical? Unfortunately, the article gives a pretty superficial analysis.<p>Edit: to forestall helpful comments, I am aware that businesses often make an effort to do things based on a kind of sophisticated analysis where they compare the upside of doing the thing ("benefits") to the downsides ("costs"), and then do the thing if the upsides seem to exceed the downsides.<p>The question is, why is it that this significantly above market rate is what Walmart thinks maximizes its benefits compared to costs?
"A senior vice president at Walmart told Yahoo! Finance at the time it was because of a “shortage” of truck drivers. (Those who study the trucking industry dispute that such a shortage exists, concluding that drivers leave the industry for jobs with better pay and hours.)"<p>It turns out that good truck drivers could also be doing other useful work, and want to be well compensated and taken care of for their labor.
Because Walmart is what happens when we value productivity over dignity.<p>The most important things in life are our time, our relationships, our health, our self-determination, basically all subjective and individual experience. Western ethos substitutes those intrinsic values with external "objective" measures rooted in necessity, fear, dogma, etc that evolved over eons of suffering and exploitation under various forms of colonialism where the winners wrote the history.<p>The ramification of these mismatched attentions/intentions is that we live in a world obsessed with optimizing efficiency, creating a strong work ethic, taking on ever-more responsibility and monopolizing nearly the entirety of our time over a career. Instead of innovating, automating and empowering the workforce to share in the risks and rewards so that someday work is not equated with basic survival.<p>I believe that the most important thing we can do is disrupt the status quo. In this case, that means thinking outside the box to whatever level is needed to equalize pay between a custodian, a retail clerk, a truck driver and a CEO. The framing of ideas and barriers to entry which prevent that leveling are the root cause of wealth inequality and represent the primary source of injustice in our lives.<p>If someone happened to win the internet lottery or buy Bitcoin at $10 like I didn't, and is wondering where to invest, stop looking to foreign markets or whatever is over the horizon, and ask what your parents and loved ones sacrificed to get you where you are today. Then ruthlessly work to remove the obstacles they faced for future generations. Anything less is not "real work" IMHO, it's just an ever-growing shrine to your ego.
All things considered, Wallmart is a pretty decent company, at least for workers, and even more if you compare with Jeff Bezo's slave driving operation.
Are the drivers expected to deliver 110% all day and everyday? We all know long haul truck drivers pee in empty Gatorade bottles to avoid using a restroom. Do Walmart drivers also defecate in diapers to avoid stopping so they can continue to be in the top tier of drivers?