Non company-owned delivery routes (debt, owning, purchase, sell)

[camosilver]

When I hear people talk about delivery routes for product distribution, the names I hear are Sara-Lee, Pepperidge Farm, Lays, etc. Besides a high cost of $50-$200k+, from what I hear, buying one of these routes is more like "buying a job" than owning your own company. Companies like this expect you, the owner, to be on the route every day doing the work yourself, not hiring a driver to do the route for you. That's not what I want. I'd like to be a distributor of some type of product that that allows absentee ownership, where I can put a driver in the route and have him do the daily deliveries. I fully intend on doing the job for as long as it takes to understand how it works and be good at it myself before hiring a driver, but that's the ultimate goal. I'd rather be on the management side of things, securing more clients, expanding the business, etc than working on the route myself all day long.

I've heard people talk about non company owned routes, which I have heard referred to as "independent routes", but can't seem to find much information on what types of products fit into this category and how to get into this type of business. I am looking for any type of information on independent routes... books, forums, articles, personal experiences, etc.

[TechGromit]

I used to know someone that purchased a bread truck route with his brother-in-law as his partner. He said it was pretty good paying, but the early morning hours was hard on him. He was forced to sell the business due to the fact her brother-in-law got involved with nose candy (cocaine) and some not so nice people came looking to collect his debts.

So the morale here is think very carefully before taking on a partner when starting/buying a business.

If you think your going to just buy a business, and think your not going to have to work at all, your asking for trouble. You should do the route yourself for at least 6 months to learn the job, this way you can fill in when your employee is on vacation, calls out sick or turns out to be completely unreliable. No store is going to accept the excuse I'm on vacation (or my employee is on vacation) when they are not getting bread deliveries for 2 weeks. While owning your own business can be rewarding, it's a 24 hours / 7 days a week thing where you worrying about it all the time.

[qlty]

I used to have 2 different snack routes it can vary from area to area as well as the main supply company as far as type of ownership and franchise agreement you have with it.I belive Lays have paid union drivers run their routes.My advise is to stay away from any Unions.