Gregster,
I want to address a point and not bogg down the other threads with either my point or your agenda.
Despite the fact that you are annoying to correspond with, you have important points. What may suprise you is that the long term readership of this board consists mostly of solid operators who agree with you on important things like complying with all the relevant labor laws and responsible insurance practices. We regularly take posters to task about not having insurance, cheating on labor laws and taxes etc because we all realize that these irresponsible operators give the industry a bad name and raise our costs.
I can only guess where it is that you have worked that abused staff, and drivers in particular, with wage practices, but my guess is that most of my colleages on this board are in full compliance with the law which is why we rise to baiting from a newcomer implying that we are not.
No doubt there are operators like the ones you assume represent the majority. Perhaps they are the majority. They are not the majority of well-run businesses. In my store, drivers make more than the minumum wage counting tips. They drive my cars and burn my gas for about 80% of the deliveries from my business. For the other 20%, on big nights when we need more drivers than we have cars, we are so busy that the drivers are making quite a bit more than the minimum wage counting tips. I would not have to pay them ANY mileage at all to be in oompliance with the law, but I do. I pay 5.5% of the value of the deliveries they make. On a night like that the payment amounts to about $50, sometimes more. On a night like that they would make about 10 runs, each with three orders/stops and an average ticket of $35+. The average distance in our delivery area is about 3 miles round trip. We track mileage on our company vehicles every night. A driver would drive about 50-70 miles on a night like that.
In a succesful delco the minimum wage and mileage issue that you are beating the drums about are not relevant because the drivers are making more than the minumum wage. All of our business practices are above-board and in compliance with the law. We are proud of our buisiness and proud of the fact that we meet our obligations. After corresponding with the other regular posters on this board, I am confident that they do as well.
When you post, over and over things like:
“You can also pay at least minimum wage plus at least the current IRS mileage rate of 58.5 cents per mile (or actual costs) so the drivers can afford proper insurance”
“Reasonable to who… You? Is it at least the IRS rate?”
“Is compliance with minimum wage law a ‘pain in the butt’ for you?”
“Not a single poster here has shown that they pay the required compensation for use of drivers vehicles. Not one!”
you imply that your correspondants on this forum do not meet obligations or comply with the law and that is insulting which is why you get some of the responses that you do.
If you would like to hang around and be a responsible voice and advocate for employees and drivers in the ongoing dialog we have here, please do so. Broaden your horizons and move beyond your “issue”. There are plenty of things to talk about, many are more important and more interesting than regulations which we already comply with. I am sure that many of the owners and managers here would welcome a responsible participant representing the views of staff. For example, there have been many threads on benefits and incentives where owners are exploring ways to pay staff more money or provide more benefits in ways that make busisness sense. Feedback on which ideas sound interesting to you would be welcomed I am sure,… if you could find a way to do it that was not insulting.
