Pros
great benefits, decent pay, and positive work environment. Coke has employee bbq's and events to keep the moral of the workforce up. As a Distribution Supervisor I managed the drivers and made sure all routes were covered, making sure all soda was delivered on time. Must be able to work with other depts, such as warehouse, sales, merchandising, as the delivery of coke is a complex machine, all depts depend on each other to make it work. Route rides with drivers are done to check-up on customers and driver methods. Great name to have on your resume. Establish metrics for delivery performance, hold your drivers accountable, and you'll be fine.
Cons
Distribution is the red headed step child of coke. Its all about sales. Salesmen slam the stores to make their quotas, and drivers have no where to store the product half the time bc the store is already full. Extreme work hours with inhumane rotating shifts. Supervisors come in at staggered times. 1am, 2am, 4am, 6am. It is grueling on the body switching times each day. Upper management obviously did not care about the sups well being by having rotating shifts. There was no need for it, sups proposed new schedule to upper management, and they shot us down. While the station manager waltzes into the plant whenever he wants. What a joke. I had frequent headaches and would feel sick from the lack of sleep I would get. Lucky to get 4 hours sleep a night. You are required to obtain your class A CDL. Coke runs the operation very lean, if drivers call out, YOU are running the route, which is ridiculous, they are tremendously understaffed. Drivers call out all the time, its not uncommon to actually run routes yourself 2-3 times week. If I wanted to be a truck driver, I wouldn't of wasted 70k on college. You will run a grueling 10-12 hour route, and still have all your projects and deadlines to take care of when you get back to the plant. There were days where I worked 17 hours a day, which is disgusting, and upper management turns a blind eye to it. Also there are tons of career coke upper managers, so to get promoted you would need to relocate.
