A day in the life of a delivery driver
With 40,193 restaurants just in London, have you ever wondered how kitchens keep well-stocked to serve thousands of customers every day? How food arrives in the city is a mystery even to most professional kitchen staff but there is a lot of work happening behind the scenes.
Follow Tony, a DHL driver with 30 years experience, through his typical delivery day and find out what goes into the “last mile” journey of food into restaurants and our plates.
01:50: Tony’s day starts with a cup of tea and a slice of toast. He makes his way to a fulfilment hub on the outskirts of West London where Collectiv Food orders are picked and consolidated for restaurants around London. The hub never stops: here, meals for over 250 flights into Europe are assembled, security checked and dispatched around the clock.
3.00: Tony arrives at the hub. Today he is driving an 18 tonne lorry, and his first task is to perform an MOT check on the vehicle.
Drivers are assigned a different vehicle every time they get on the road and must go through a detailed routine check before starting any route.
At the bay he checks the pallets and boxes that have been picked and consolidated overnight. Checking orders is not a driver’s responsibility but he still casts an eye on the quality of the packing order and checks whether the box labels are facing outwards. This will save time when the customer goes through the order to match it against the delivery note.
He loads the inside of the lorry tightly by fastening all goods. It’s a split fridge which can be divided in two compartments and keeps constant temperatures between 0C to 4C.
4.10: Tony hits the road. He has a total of four stops to make and four different sets of instructions on when and how orders need to arrive. The first stop is in the outskirts of East London. After doing that he’ll make his way back West.
He has over an hour drive ahead of him to cross the city and reach his first delivery drop. London is still asleep at this time and Tony can breeze through the main arteries.
Lorry drivers train in a different way to the common car driver. For them spatial awareness is key. More rules include: staying in control, getting the big picture around your vehicle and keeping relaxed.
Being relaxed allows better decision making at the steering wheel, as well as reaching the customer with a better attitude. Tony keeps the radio on throughout the journey and sings “Because I am happy…” as he constantly checks all mirrors.
5:37: the first stop is at the CPU (Central Production Unit) of a high street grab-and-go chain. He is delivering lamb, chicken and beef, as well as samples of new products for the chef.
Tony parks and turns on the deck lights. He prints out a small ticket from his dashboard. This shows the average temperature from inside the lorry to track how the food has been kept between the warehouse and the delivery point. The ticket also shows time of day and is stapled to the delivery note as proof of arrival.
The chef checks the delivery and ticks off the goods on the delivery note; but the sample boxes cannot be found. After some moving and re-arranging, they are found in the middle of the pallet stack.
Tony gets back in the lorry at 5:59. He fills in the delivery sheet for this drop. On to the next location.
06:23: Tony reaches another customer’s CPU. He’s delivering eggs (hard boiled and liquid) and chicken.
He has driven before to this location, as well as all the others, during an assessment drive with his supervisor. Assessment drives are done ahead of starting delivery routes and are meant to identify sharp bends, tight parking spaces, narrow entrances and any other challenges to drop locations. For this business park, Tony sets the route so to enter from the south. He has calculated that this will be an easier manoeuvre out of the park once the delivery is done.
Paper work for this delivery starts, the temperature ticket is printed out and added to the customer delivery note.
Delivery checks go smoothly and the customer is happy.
But problems come from the least expected place. The tail lift is not closing properly: whatever Tony does, the lift is not retracting underneath the vehicle. Other drivers stand around, feeling Tony’s pain.
06:51: Tony is back in the lorry filling in this drop’s paper work. He feels like an office secretary, with staples and stashes of paper.
07:02: Traffic starts to build up in the streets as the sun rises.
Tony parks in front of the last CPU in the route with a delivery of 800 chickens, prints the fridge temperature report and fills in the necessary paper work for this delivery.
07:15: Tony brings out the delivery and checks it with the Head Chef.
The order is fine but the samples they were expecting with this delivery are not there. This will be sorted out with Collectiv Food’s account manager directly.
Tony is back in the deck and fills in more paper work.
07:23: It’s been over three hours on the road now and Tony is due his compulsory break. His usual treat is a chocolate bar with a cuppa and a chat with the wife. She works at Heathrow for an aviation company and has also been at work since 5am today.
07:55: the break is over. More paper work to be prepared for the next leg of the route.
08:13: the sun is high and the day has officially started in the City of London, while Tony has been on the road for four hours already.
He arrives at Canary Wharf for his last delivery of the day. Canary Wharf is a pseudo-public space with a loading bay shared amongst several local restaurants. Tony knows he has to be as quick as possible to free up parking space for the next driver.
The loading bay is located centrally for all outlets but for Tony this means taking two lifts and pushing the pallets along a long corridor to bring the delivery to the client.
The order is received by a sous chef who is temporarily replacing the chef who would usually check the delivery sheet. As he is new to the task, he takes longer to check the order. On top of that, the boxes of back ribs have been mixed in with boxes of Boston butts and have very similar labels. Both Tony and the sous chef walk around the pallets several times to count each box by product category. This takes over an hour.
Finally, all the numbers tally up with the delivery sheet and Tony is relieved.
09:29: the last delivery took longer than expected. Tony fills in the last bit of paper work of the day. He is now ready to hit the road for the journey home.
He will arrive at 11.00 after a full day of work on the road. He chooses the route under the Tower of London for a little treat along the way at the same time as the first lunch customers are served across London.
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