I don't have much idea about what it's like to deal with shippers and receivers at the great big warehouses and other such places. I'm keen to know of some of your worst experiences with shippers / receivers, and how you guys dealt with the situation.

 

You have to know whats going on the truck, as you will be the one that takes the heat when it comes off the truck. Make sure the count is correct and items are in good condition. Arrange for "lumper fees" if needed. CYA
Grocerey warehouses {my experience} are the worst, they are ALWAYS looking to cut the freight bill, "the load is to cold", "the load is to hot", "its not stacked right", "its not on BLUE pallets", ect, ect.
AND your dispatcher may dock you. They have insurance, but having to deal with bad loads {with your name on them} takes up thier time. You may wind up sitting a lot if it happens to often.

 

Well, two terrible experiences. (actually a lot more, but these are the worst).

Told to pull to dock X at an Atlanta foodservice whse, for a load to Walmart in Fla. Backed in at my time (6pm). waited and waited. Went to check, they said we 're waiting to load. Checked again...later; still told to wait. Third time I checked they told me I was at the wrong dock...there was a loaded trailer at another. Finally dropped and left at 4am, 12 hrs later....too late to make my scheduled appt at WalMart in Fla within my HrsofSvc; transferred the trailer in Fla to another.

Another time was at the dock in a NOLA whse; full load of pallets of mixed M&M candy. Took them 5 hours (they do move SLOW in New Orleans) to break the order down, and couldn't make my next PU.

Run a refer, and what everyone says about food service is true. You sit and play with yourself while you wait for them to decide they are ready to load/unload. Other bad places....the military district warehouse in Norfolk; bring a good, looooong book.

But let me give you a positive so you don't get too discouraged. Once ran a dry van to a shirt warehouse (forgot who) in NC east of Charlotte. Full trailer of boxes full of shirts. Got there to find it was "driver unload". I talked to the lady who was the whse supervisor a little about the Panthers and the Bucs, and next thing you know she told me she had some guys finished with their work, so she had them unload. Then marked my B/L that it was "driver unload", so I got the (minimal) payment. You meet those folks often, too. Just remember that you reap what you sow, so treat the whse folks nice and it will eventually come back to you.

 

I took a load of rice to Norfolk about 20 years ago. I havent had a worse experience yet

 

Worst.....well, it was the longest, although the people where nice.

We picked up a preloaded piece of machinery, I think it was a skidder. To fit it on the trailer without being oversize, they took the wheels off of it. They put it right on the deck, because it would have been tall too.

The directions we had just took us to the town, the buyer had to meet us, because it was difficult to find (no kidding). We went what seemed 100 miles out of town in the wilderness, skinny roads got skinnier, and finally turned into dirt trails, at the end of which was the farm.

To unload it, in the middle of nowhere in Vermont, at this guys house, they had to put the wheels back on. All 4 of them. They only had a bucket loader if I remember this right, and little by little lifted this piece up, sliding pieces of wood under it to raise it up, so they could reattach the tires. Of course they had to go back and forth, left and right as to not topple it.

After about 4 or 5 hours, I was starving, hubby was starving. The guy just handed us the keys to his truck with directions on how to get to the only place to eat at within about 20 miles. We had to do all kinds of explaining what we were doing in "bubba's" truck.

We get back, and only 2 or 3 more hours after that we were all done. All together only about 10-12 hours.

 

The worst? Probably the time I some Ricky Racer on a slip sheet machine remove another drivers feet ... I saw a driver killed by another go fast moron on clamp lift (hit the driver as he was shrink wrapping a pallet, and I witnessed another driver die on a loading dock of a major heart attack... I try not to dwell too much on the bad things.. but I still do not trust idiots on forklifts..

 

Wow. My worst. I had a one stop extra load. It was a full trailer of discontinued waterbed mattresses we hadn't carried in years, to be delivered to a store that was a regular on my normal route.

I was told the guy was having some problems with his wife, so I should expect him to be sleeping at the store, and I should knock on the door at 8:00 AM.

8:00 AM came around. I knocked on the door. No answer. Around 8:30 AM the guy (Shane) finally peeled his half naked ass off the bare waterbed mattress he had been sleeping on, and came to the door, wearing nothing but his tightie whities.

He went into the back room, took out a Solo cup, and poured himself a tall glass of some cheap brown booze in a plastic bottle. He shook out a handful of pills, and chased them with the booze, then he drank another cup full of bourbon, whiskey, or whatever it was as a chaser.

He sent me across town a ways to some wrecked little dump of a place he was using for a warehouse. Backing in was hell. Around the time I got close to his door, his help arrived, in the form of a black college student looking to earn a little extra cash.

The door was locked, and the key didn't fit. The college student called the scuzzbag who owned all of this, and the scuzzbag called a locksmith. We waited for ages for the locksmith to come out and swap the pins in the lock so the key worked.

When we finally gained admission to the "warehouse" it was full of crap that looked like it had been bought at auctions and fleamarkets. Total junk. There was no place to put anything, let alone a whole truckload of waterbed mattresses.

The black guy didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, and had no idea what to do. So I had to take command of the situation, and figure out a plan for moving all this crap from here to there, to make room. A couple of hours later, we finally had nearly enough room for all the freight.

We spent another hour or two off-loading all that crap, carrying it through the obstacle course, and stacking it up as best we could. The black guy was a good worker, but he was just a clueless kid, who had no idea how to do anything, and needed constant micro-management to get anything right. No racisim implied. He just happened to be black, and it could have been a stupid college boy dumbass of any color or creed.

After spending all morning and half of the afternoon on this pointless quest, we finally got the last box crammed into that former auto garage, or whatever it was. The owner who was supposed to come by and direct all this had still not shown up (which is probably a good thing for all the motorists of Gastonia, NC.) The black guy left, and I drove back to the store to collect my COD.

I was supposed to pick up $8,000 for the load. The guy had finished off the bottle of booze, and the bottle of pills, and he was the most wasted human being I have ever seen. He paid me with small bills, with nothing bigger than a $50.

I was trying to count it all, since I was responsible for the money. He kept ranting about how the accountant where I worked was trying to steal from him, how I was trying to steal from him. He got downright hateful several times, and started to make threats against me.

I counted ~$5,000, which was ~$3,000 short. I pointed this out, and the guy accused me of pocketing some of the money. He started screaming at me, and flailing around.

I left, drove home, parked my truck, marched right up to the accountant, and told him "I got as much money as I could. If it's not here, I didn't steal it. I'm a truck driver, not a fu(king police officer. You don't pay me enough to deal with this sh!t, and if you try to say I stole any money from you, I will drive that wasted asshole up here to rape your bean counting ass." (Or something to that effect.)

What a nightmare.

I grew up in an alcoholic family, but nothing prepared me for dealing with Shane.

I really hope he's dead now. His wife was nice, and she really loved him, and his state was tearing her up inside. I hope he died, and she found a real man.

 

Why is it even relevant to mention the college kids color at all? :shock:

 

more detail for the readers mind to picture the story?

 

A couple weeks ago, I was dispatched to load sugar in Paul, ID. I was told not to fuel up before hand, so I figured the load would be heavy. I get there and find out it's 2500 lb. tote/bags on slip sheets. After getting loaded and head to their scale, I'm over on the drives by only 100 lbs. but only have a 1/4 tank of fuel. Being the newbie that I am, I decide the load needs to be a little lighter on the drives. I drive back to the warehouse and there's another IDC truck getting loaded. I show him my scale ticket and he says to just let it go. Then he asks if I strapped the bags? ummm no, why? Then he tells the story.
His first load there 15 yrs ago was not strapped in. By the time he got to the destination he had a full trailer of sugar a foot deep. It appeared that the bags settled a lot and finally busted at the seams. The whole load had to be rejected and he had a big mess to clean up.
My reason for such a long intro story is for newbies to not assume they need no help and to never trust the guy loading your load knows anything other than where the time clock is. Overweight tickets are the driver's responsibilty where I work. Load damage can be too if it's determined that the driver was negligent. CYA