Bureau of Labor and Statistics(BLS)

 Here is a link to the BLS page for the wage(s) information of DSD route drivers/sales in the Greater Nashville area for 2012. Those numbers reflect pay rates of route drivers delivering for ONE company. They have to familiarize themselves with ONE company's handheld computer and provide it's necessary TCOM (communication) method as well as ONE company's line of products. In order to provide my services to ALL the self-employed routemen in the greater Nashville area, I have to train enough drivers, on ALL the different handhelds and all the different products, to handle the potential workload. How do they train? I personally pay them a training salary to ride with a volunteering distributor from EACH different company for 5 days. The multi-company knowledge is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, there'd be only one relief driver per company. Problem with that is; everyone would want that ONE relief driver for the same 20 or so weeks from April to October. Only being able to fill in for ONE company and it's distributors would not provide enough work. Not to mention,having drivers with muti-company training also means a FAR GREATER likelihood of every distributor securing the date(s) they'd like to take off. All of that said, if adequate knowledge of ONE company's way of doing things is worth $14/hour, how much is the knowledge of how 5,6, or seven companies ways of doing things worth? Oh, and don't you think that I should get a fee for paying for all that training, as well as setting the whole thing up? Enough 'overcharging' talk. If you personally can't afford my services, I'm sorry. Maybe when you pay your route off, you should take the extra money and save it up for a vacation instead of upgrading that pickup truck or buying the latest smartphone or bigscreen. I have several REPEAT customers that have lived modest lifestyles and saved money and are knocking me down for my service. I'm talking about multiple distributors booking 4 weeks at a time. Their pickup truck might not be as nice as yours but hey, for 4 weeks next year, they'll be sipping margarita's on a beach somewhere, or maybe in Colorado or Montana tagging that trophy elk, or finally taking their children on a nice family vacation. My fees are NOT changing. Unless someone else comes along and offers the same service at a rate you CAN afford, I'm the best option for you. However, I am very confident that NO ONE would take on the same services that I'm offering for much less. Be careful though, when it comes to your livelihood. You often get what you pay for in this life. One last thing, if anyone is interested in training my drivers for their particular company, let me know. Thing is, they need to be able to run your route after 5 days if they needed to, so please, properly train them and don't use them as free labor.