Bob’s discount furniture offers a wide selection of home furniture products for every room in the house.
They have an excellent selection of dining, living room, and bedroom furniture, often sold at knockdown prices compared to their competitors.
If you’ve purchased goods from Bob’s then you’ll likely have arranged for them to be delivered using either their “BoBtastic Delivery” white-glove service or their standard delivery option.
But when the goods arrive, are you expected to pay the delivery driver a tip?
We’ve looked into this question by researching whether it is customary to provide a tip to delivery drivers and, if so, what level of tip it is you should be offering.
To help you consider this we’ve looked at Bob’s Discount Furniture delivery workers’ average yearly salary and also the cost of home delivery from Bob’s in the first place.
Let’s take a look…
Should You Tip The Bob’s Furniture Delivery Man?
It is customary and expected that you tip delivery workers and we recommend tipping Bob’s delivery guys around $5 to $15 depending on the size and amount of goods being delivered as well as the quality of the service you receive.
What Do Bob’s Delivery Guys Earn?
Before deciding whether to tip Bob’s delivery drivers and how much, you might be interested to learn how much they earn. This usually dictates to most people how much they’re willing to tip.
For example, some industries like broadband technicians already receive adequate remuneration. Others such as carpet cleaners do not.
According to Careerbliss, Bob’s furniture drivers earn around $32k – $33k per year.
This is actually far lower than the median delivery driver salary, which, according to salary.com, stands at $44,300pa.
This means that Bob’s Furniture delivery drivers earn almost a whopping $15,000 less per year than other delivery drivers in the industry.
Indeed, this is in line with what we found when looking at whether to tip Pottery Barn drivers who earn around $50,000 (median) per year.
| Average Yearly Gross Salary for Drivers | Proportion |
| $29,781 | 10% |
| $36,700 | 25% |
| $44,300 | 50% (median) |
| $53,000 | 75% |
Given Bob’s delivery workers’ lower-than-average salary, you may feel it is in good conscience to offer them a tip, and we thought something similar when looking at whether to tip Rooms to Go furniture delivery.
This is especially so in current times as inflation tightens its grip hold on the country.
Bob’s delivery drivers tend to earn less than other delivery drivers in the industry on the basis of our research as we found out when we looked at whether to tip cabinet delivery drivers.
How Much Is Delivery From Bob’s Furniture?
Another key metric that might sway you one way or the other when it comes to deciding on whether a tip is justified, is the cost of delivery in the first place.
Unfortunately, delivery from Bob’s isn’t free and is priced depending on the subtotal of the goods you order.
They offer two types of delivery. Firstly, white-glove where they deliver and assemble the product for you. Here are the prices:
They also offer a cheaper option where you are required to unpackage and assemble the goods yourself:
Our view is that these prices are not particularly cheap at first glance, especially if the subtotal of your goods is over $1000.
However, they are probably about average for the US with Shiply putting average US furniture delivery costs at between $75 to $250 for local deliveries and up to $600 for long-distance drops.
The general cost of furniture delivery may swing the pendulum the other way for you when deciding whether to provide a tip but it’s fair to say that Bob’s delivery charges aren’t anything out of the ordinary in our view.
Related Article: Do You tip Nebraska Furniture Mart?
How Much Should You Offer a Bob’s Delivery Guy?
It is customary to offer a tip to delivery drivers and we recommend paying $5 – $15 on the basis that goods from Bob’s are likely to be heavy, Bob’s drivers earn less than the national median salary and they will generally do an excellent job in our experience (both with delivery and assembly when using the white-glove service).
Indeed, this is the customary practice we found when we look at whether to tip Kroger delivery workers.
You may wish to tip more if:
- The delivery is completed without a hiccup and exceeds your expectation
- The delivery worker goes beyond the call of duty (i.e. delivers in snow or delivers to a location further than your front door)
- The delivery worker is polite and courteous
- The assembly of the product is done efficiently, quickly, and with good workmanship (with the white-glove service)
On the flip side, you may wish to decline to give a tip if:
- The delivery is late
- The delivery worker is rude, impolite or inefficient
- The assembly of the product is poor, slow or the product is damaged (with the white-glove service)
Do You Tip Deliver Workers More at Christmas or Other Holidays?
We recommend tipping an extra $5 – $10 at Christmas or other holidays.
Christmas is an expensive time for most families and delivery workers may be working unsociable hours around this time of the year and contending with logistical issues like snow/inclement weather and an extra busy workload.
How Should You Tip (cash, card, check?)
We always recommend tipping in cash where possible.
If you pay a tip by card or check then this potentially makes it harder for the driver to receive the money, especially if you add a tip onto your payment to the company when paying for your goods, as this will likely mean the driver never actually sees the money and the company receives it instead.
Paying by card is also impractical as a delivery driver won’t have the means to debit the money. They don’t carry chip and pin machines with them for one.
Final Thoughts
It is certainly customary in the US to offer a delivery driver a tip and we think this is especially so for Bob’s Furniture drivers.
We came to the same conclusion when we looked at whether you should tip other manual workers like Stanley Steemer’s carpet cleaners and the etiquette on tipping Safelitle Auto-Glass Installers.
They earn a lesser wage than many delivery drivers but yet have to carry heavier and more cumbersome loads.
Whilst Bob’s delivery cost is far from cheap, it is fairly standard across the industry, especially for larger and heavier goods.
We doubt Bob’s drivers will be expecting a tip on every occasion, but we consider it in good conscience to offer one to them, especially if they go beyond their calling or if it’s the holiday season.
Of course, if their service is poor then you may feel that a tip isn’t justified, especially given the rather large sums you’ll have already forked out for delivery, especially if you’ve gone for the BoBTastic white-glove delivery option.
We’ll leave it for you to decide.
