Some servers I join have literally no loot at all - Was on a server yesterday evening and was in cherno - no loot at all, so I went to Balota airfield - again no loot, so then i ran up to the military base at pavlovo - again no loot AT ALL.
Thought it might have been the server so ran away from the base and logged out to joined a new random server.
Ran back to the military base - again, NO LOOT! Ran back to balota airfield, again no loot!
Changed server again to a completely random server. Same again. I even took the time to run up to N/W Airfield - guess what? found ZILCH.
I did try running back away from the area a little way and waiting a few mins and running back to see if my presence in the area forced loot to spawn but that didn't work, also I found no zombies where ever I went.
I did log into a server just earlier that did have loot (pretty much every item on the N/W airfield were army boots though! Not a single bullet, piece of kit or a weapon) but just joined another server and again having the problem of no loot - I even ran to the military base south of the airfield and checked out the surrounding villages... No loot or zombies again!