Job Description for a Furniture Delivery Driver
The job description of furniture delivery driver has similarity to the job description of many other types of drivers who deliver merchandise, such as office supply delivery drivers and package delivery drivers, the whole group also sometimes called light truck delivery drivers. The type of merchandise makes the primary difference among these different types of delivery drivers. In retail merchandise delivery driving jobs, including furniture delivery drivers, another distinction involves whether the driver works in an employment setting involving wholesale to retail or one that involves retail to consumer.
Other People Are Reading
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Business to Business
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Business-to-business furniture delivery drivers transport furniture from a wholesale seller to the retail seller. On the retail end of the furniture industry, the recipient business may refer to these delivery drivers as “inbound” furniture delivery drivers, as mentioned at the Furninfo website. These drivers may load or unload the crated furniture; however, warehouse workers at either or both ends of the transaction may do the loading or unloading of the furniture.
Consumer
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Business-to-consumer furniture delivery drivers have more visibility, since they interact directly with the customer during furniture delivery to homes and offices. Business-to-consumer furniture delivery drivers load the goods for delivery, transport them by truck to the customer’s home or office, unload the furniture at the destination site, and position the furniture as directed by the customer, according to the WBMason website.
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Driving
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Furniture delivery drivers spend much of their workday transporting furniture from the furniture warehouse to customers via a company truck. Typically, the company truck has paintwork that identifies the furniture retailer that sold the merchandise. Also, typically, furniture delivery work requires a Class B vehicle operator’s license to qualify as a driver of the furniture dealer’s vehicles, according to the WBMason website.
Lifting
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A furniture delivery driver’s occupation involves the loading and unloading of furniture pieces, and thus the applicant for this job must have a level of physical fitness that corresponds with the ability to lift furniture items. Job specifications may give a weight specification that the job applicant must have the capability to lift, such as 50 lbs. With awkward or heavy items, a driver may work with assistants or two drivers may work together, splitting the day’s driving into shifts.
Miscellaneous
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A business-to-consumer furniture delivery driver also typically has a responsibility for miscellaneous tasks, grouped together under the umbrella designation of “customer service.” The furniture delivery driver has a duty to ensure the customer’s satisfaction, which can extend to such activities as making repairs of minor damage that occurred during transit, as described at the Furninfo website. Typical job protocols for the furniture delivery driver's work also include such things as navigating to the delivery location by using a map or atlas, following a delivery schedule as arranged between the driver's employer and the customer--particularly for business to consumer delivery--and ensuring that the customer who takes delivery of the furniture signs any appropriate receipts and associated documents relating to the delivery of the merchandise.
Training, Outlook, Earnings
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Furniture delivery driver jobs typically do not require more than a high school degree and may not even require a high school degree; however, such drivers increasingly have some post-secondary education. Payscale incorporates outlook and earnings figures into light truck delivery jobs overall and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) into truck transportation and warehousing jobs. BLS gives an anticipated 11 percent growth rate from 2008 to 2018, industry-wide, and a $17.97 hourly or $729 weekly earnings as an average for "specialized freight trucking," the category which best describes furniture delivery driver.
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References
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