Vending Trucks by Jimmy Ingram
Very few vending companies know how to plan and then design their vending-machine-route trucks, it is a monkey see, monkey do vending world when it comes to this subject. If you are in the vending route business and you understand how to design a proper route vending-truck, let me congratulate you right now.
Some Questions To Ask Yourself On This Subject
Was your truck's suspension designed for vending?
What are your out of pocket expenses annually for your vending route trucks upkeep?
Have you taken a close look at those repairs?
Does your route drivers look forward to driving their route vending-truck?
How much added time does it take for your vending route drivers to pull each locations inventory?
Do your drivers experience constant injuries that are related to their vending route truck?
Have any of your drivers applied for worker's compensations?
One of the most-common problems vending machine companies face with their vending route trucks is vehicle-suspension problems; off the showroom-floor-trucks are not designed to take this kind of daily-abuse.
Vending machine providers always stack cold beverages on one side or the other and then their-snacks on the opposite side of the route-truck. The side of the route-truck with the cold drinks slowly begins to dip and all of the products will shift when the vehicle stops or turns corners.
I am sure all of you have seen the smaller vending-machine-vehicle with roll-up side-doors and a separate cab area; these vending-vehicles were built with the vending-vehicle's suspension and the drivers comfort in mind, that's the reason there are so many of these vending-trucks on the road today.
Our favorite goofy vending vehicle is the boxy 6- wheeler with a separate cab area, a big box storage area, a step up bumper in back, with a roll-up door and a heavy metal slide that has to be constantly pulled out by the poor route driver very time they make a service call. This truck looks very similar to the vehicle that truck rentals rent to the public to move their furniture. There isn't a more poorly designed truck for vending route work on the planet.
If you watch the poor vending-route drivers unlucky enough to work for companies who have leased these vending-vehicles, you will see that they are working their tired butts off just trying to roll-up the heavy doors and then pulling that heavy cumbersome-steel ramp out so they can drag themselves up the ramp into the vending-truck's product storage area. At the end of their workday; the route-driver really hates their jobs.
When it was time to lease our first vending vehicle, we took a lot of time working our way through the obvious and not so obvious obstacles. We did not want our route-drivers hating their jobs with our company and we didn't want them calling out sick at 5:am. Oh, and by the way would you like to guess who had to drive their route that day in their place if one of them did call out sick?
So we tried to design a vending-truck that we, the owners of the company, did not mind driving five or six days every week. We also wanted our employees to be able to service as many location/stops on a weekly basis as possible; as we all know, more location-stops per route-driver on a daily basis equals less trucks we would have to lease for our vending-route, and of course a bigger weekly cash flow. But one thing that owners seldom think of is, since most route drivers are on a weekly salary, plus a small commission that is based on how much money they pick-up on a daily basis, the more stops a driver can make on a daily basis is directly related to how much commissions they earn.
When we owned routes, our truck of choice looked very much like a UPS truck.
The only vending-truck's we leased were the UPS style walk-through van. This vehicle was known as the "vendor's friend." Back then we would have a licensed outfitter customize our vending-vehicles. As many of us know with this style of truck, you can get up from the driver's seat and walk back through the truck without ever leaving the vehicle. At the end of the day this is a great benefit for your drivers and it really limits driver accidents and workman comp claims. Another reason we like this design was each truck had a drop safe under the seat and the driver was much safer that way.
We have leased quite a few of these vending-vehicles when we had full-line vending-routes and we always encourage our Vending Management Company's 3rd-party-vendors to follow our lead. We always leased them and we always laid-out the storage-area ourselves. And we also have designed several of these vending trucks for vending-routes we were creating for resell.
Jimmy has been a serial entrepreneur for over 3-decades; his advice to give to young entrepreneurs is "you have to create your own luck by Laboring Under Correct Knowledge". You can purchase Jimmy's books at e Business Media Online and you can download several of Jimmy's books FREE of charge on the vending industry at:
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