- Forklift drivers are an essential part of warehouse operations for Costco.
- It's a challenging and sometimes stressful job, but one that earns a $2 hourly wage premium.
- A Costco forklift driver in Chicago shares what the job is like.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a Chicago-area Costco forklift driver who requested anonymity as they are not authorized to speak with the media. Business Insider verified their identity and employment details. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I joined Costco in 2011, starting out in the food court, and have done pretty much everything from merchandising to produce, deli, meat department, tire shop, and marketing. I was a supervisor in the warehouse and then ultimately settled down as a forklift driver.
Typically, Costco forklift drivers are seen kind of like supervisors, because you designate the flow of the building. You either set it up for success or failure, depending on what goes on in the receiving area.
I also make more as a forklift driver now than I did ten years ago as a supervisor. My current wage is just 20 cents less than a supervisor's right now, so they hold you up to very similar standards. And it's fun driving a machine!
We help Costco sell huge amounts of stuff
For example, today we were out of stock of Kirkland Signature water, but a truck driver came in early with 20 pallets of it. And I know we're gonna sell that water as soon as we throw it out there on the floor, so I told him to back up to the dock door, and I unloaded it right away.
That was six hours early, plus we would have been closed at the time we were scheduled to unload him, so that's 20 pallets of water that's gonna sell before the end of the day.
Then, a different truck came that had 24-packs of Monster. As soon as you unload them, they sell out, so that's another three pallets of sales for today that wouldn't have been added if I hadn't unloaded that truck.
I'll look at the inventory on hand and work with the merchants to make sure we remove certain things from the floor and set the flow of the building because if we keep stuff in the truck and keep it back there on the dock, it's not going to sell, and that's bad for everyone.
We receive full truckloads of everything we need, sorted by corporate and shipped out to us. The buyers look at our sales and see what we're projected to sell and they tell the depot to send a certain amount of pallets to a given building.
Typically, a truck has a minimum of 20 pallets and a maximum of 60 pallets of items, depending on how heavy the items are. You don't really see smaller stores going through three truckloads of water or a truckload of paper towels in a day.
In a truckload of 60 pallets of paper towels, each pallet has 30 sell units, so that's 1,800 packs of towels. The sheer volume of things that go through our building is crazy.
Costco takes safety incredibly seriously
I'm actually a Costco forklift trainer, too.
Costco worked with OSHA to set up its own certification course. We have a third-party company that certifies all the trainers, but the trainers are all Costco employees. Every building has to have at least one trainer and they are the only ones who can train and certify Costco employees to operate the machines.
Trainers are usually the more veteran drivers who have shown they know how to operate safely because it's not just about driving fast.
When you drive a forklift, you actually don't have to drive fast; you have to drive smart, and you have to drive carefully because these forklifts weigh as much as three cars. The battery alone on a forklift weighs as much as a car, so there's a lot of weight and power there.
We only train one person at a time to make sure that we're giving them the attention they need, and then they get around 20 hours of supervised driving.
In the end, if we feel comfortable with how they drive and they've shown that they're going to be safe drivers, we go through a checklist. They have to show proficiency in load placement, driving in the freezer, operating instructions, vehicle stability, and properly caring for the battery.
After six months, we take them through an evaluation to make sure they're still driving safely. If they've had no incidents, we give them full certification. Then they just have to recertify every two years.
Our location hasn't had any notable accidents, but any major incidents in a warehouse are documented and shared with all the warehouses for review and to see how they could have been prevented.
There's a lot of safety information being passed around throughout the company.
There's always work for a forklift driver
Once you're a forklift driver, there's zero turnover rate. We have a joke among Costco employees that forklift drivers think they're God's gift to the earth because they're always needed everywhere.
We're pretty much the only ones who get offered overtime. Even when there's an overtime freeze, they'll still offer us overtime because they need us so badly.
Forklift drivers also get a $2 premium on their hourly wage. Nobody ever wants to quit being a forklift driver.
Not everybody can be a forklift driver, though. There can be a lot of stress, especially in the morning before the warehouse opens.
It's hard to find somebody with the right mindset to be a forklift driver because it's not something that everybody can handle.
As a trainer, if I see you freaking out while you're making a hot dog, I don't think I want you driving a 5,000-pound machine.
Essential machines — and essential employees
I think there's a reason why our new CEO used to be a forklift driver — there's always so much to do, and the work is never done. It's such an essential machine, specifically for Costco.
Where are you going to fit 2,000 pallets of merchandise? You can't keep it on the floor, so you're gonna have to rack it on tall steel shelves, and you're gonna eventually have to bring that stuff down.
You can fit one pallet of chips on the floor, but that pallet of chips is gonna sell within an hour, so you're gonna have to bring out a forklift and bring down another two pallets. Boom, let's go. Oh, and now you're out of Gatorade.
Let's say TVs are on sale for $200. Guess what? You're gonna have to drop some more TVs down from the rack in 20 minutes.
Whenever we go out on the floor, we have a spotter in front and a spotter in back, and they kind of help keep people away. We also close the aisle that we're working on, as well as the aisle adjacent to us in case anything were to fall on the other side.
And we have to work efficiently since those aisles aren't making sales if they're closed.
The $2-an-hour incentive helped push people to want to be forklift drivers again. We want to work for Costco, but money talks. Offer us more money, and I'm gonna want to do that job.