How many times has this happened to you? You show up at a warehouse to make a delivery. You walk in smiling. You pleasantly hand your papers to the receive and say "hi, I have a delivery for you." The receive looks at your paper work, then asks "do you need a lumper, or are you going to unload it yourself?"
Your smile is suddenly gone as you realize that your day may have just been ruined. A whole bunch of thoughts and questions race through your brain as you wrestle with this unexpected problem. Is the product heavy? Do I have to re-stack every box, or just break each skid down to a certain level? Will a lumper get me out of here quicker than I could? How much money will it cost? Do I have enough cash on me? Will it cost more than my company is willing to pay? Will they purposely try to make it difficult for me?

For some reason, many trucking companies will pay a lumper more money for this task than they will their own driver. Most lumpers will demand anywhere from $60.00 to $150.00. While most companies are willing to pay lumpers what ever they ask, they will only pay their drivers about $40.00 to $60.00 for the same exact job. Companies claim that they do this because they want to discourage drivers from wasting all their energy on physical labor, so that they have more energy to drive, when they leave. However, I question their motivation. Why should it matter who does it? if a company is willing to pay a lumper $150.00, then they should offer their driver $150.00. Its only fair.
More here>>>>>>>>>>>http://www.skaggmo.addr.com/lumpers.htm

Originally Posted by rumbarrel What's a lumper?

Originally Posted by englewoodcowboy I never did agree with that either. There were a lot of loads I would gladly pay lumpers for, that had a butt load of handling to be done, but when I hit a dock that provided a fork lift etc. and all that had to be done was move once to a inspection zone, when cleared move again to a freezer (I ran reefer) and the company I worrked for would only pay drivers 60 to unload and the lumpers at these docks would get 150 (specially when you were in a predominently illegal immigrant area).... I can tell you back then Jose Conseco unloaded quite a few of my trucks at 150+.......

Originally Posted by Baack A pallet Skid loader = fork lift or pallet jack

Originally Posted by e-tee How did you, uhh, Jose cash the checks?

Originally Posted by capnhector ive heard of some drivers "hireing" a lumper ask the lumper how much they charge then write a comcheck to them selves making more than the company would pay them.