The winner of my absolute WORST live load has to go to Domino Sugar in NO, LA.

18.5 hours (yep, that's EIGHTEEN and a half) for a live load. Got there at 5:30am and didn't leave til midnight. Appointment time was for 6am.

Totally unforgivable!

What's your worst?

A live nursery load in Cornelius, OR. Appt time was 11:30am on a wednesday (got there # 11:55am; not my fault). In a dock space # 1:30pm. They started loading me at 1:00am thursday morning (full load). Left # 5:30am Thursday. 4 drops in Indianna, all the following Tuesday. No problem, got swapped in Iowa on Sunday.

oh my god......i hope you got detention pay on that one.

As posted elsewhere here in The Truckers Report:

From 8pm on a Tuesday eve to 7:30 pm on a Wednesday eve and my compensation was $50.00. I gave 'em concise directions about the $50.00!!
My "appt." time for loading was 11pm yet I was on their property at 8 pm.

ahhh trucking you gotta love it and all the crap that goes with it.

Couple of years ago, I went to Lowell Mi, near Grand Rapids to pick up a load of wheat bran, first of 3 loads going to Kelloggs in London Ontario. I arrived before 7 am as requested, and found out the load wasn't ready. I waited and it took them until past 1 pm to have the load ready. They milled the product while I waited, and pumped it into the bulk trailer warm. I was supposed to be at Kelloggs at 3 pm, so they already had me late for delivery.

I got the paperwork, and headed for the border, only to be held up there for over 3 hours because the shipper goofed up on doing the paperwork. So i finally got through ther and headed for London, arriving there about 8:30 in the evening. I got checked in, hooked up hoses and started pumping the bran off the trailer.

Within 15 minutes, I had opened all 5 hoppers on the trailer and had nothing flowing through the pipes. The warm load had cooled in the trailer, and for all intents and purposes I had a load of edible concrete in the wagon. I beat and hammered with my deadblow hammer, and still couldn't break the load loose and make it flow.

So, I ended up getting Kelloggs to rig me up an air hose and nozzle, and what i would do was depressurize the trailer, open the roof hatch, poke around with the hose till I had a bunch of the product broken loose, and then I would reseal the hatch, restart the truck blower and blow product till i ran out again. By 4:30 in the morning, I was gettig pretty punchy from being up since 5 am, and having to verbally repeat to myself all the steps to do so I didn't open up a pressurized trailer and send myself on a trip to the moon. I finally got the load off at 4:30, headed for the truckstop and grabbed about 2-1/2 hours sleep, and then headed back to Michigan for the next load.

Shipper got billed for the delay in loading, the delay at the border, and the time I spent unloading. I got 16 bucks detention per hour for my time, plus the freight for the load.

Since then, in consultation with some other people, I have developed some techniques that would even get that load off the trailer.

We had trouble there with the shipper doing that before. One gal that works for us spent 36 hours in Canada trying to unload a trailer there, and they finally routed a truck up from the states to help here get unloaded. the driver and trainee he had with him just told her to get some sleep, they would get the load off the trailer. They made Kelloggs get out some vacuum equipment and hook that up while they broke the load loose from the top.

i went there with jb last year and was in and out in an hour. sweet talking goes along way.

It's faster to forklift a load on a van that it is to pump it off with a blower. Though, I know of two dogfood plants that allow unlimited pressure for offloads, and in those places, I can kick 50,000 pounds of flour off in 30 minutes. that means that I am pushing about 1650 pound of flour through a 4 inch diameter pipe every minute. That's almost a full pallet worth, and you have to make darn sure there aren;t any leaks!!!

Owens Corning Fiberglass, Barrington NJ-----26 hours trying to get loaded several years ago. Dont put up with this anymore. Today I would leave.

Went to a chicken plant in Ga. a few months ago. Had a 11 am appointment and I backed in # 10:30am and they started on me. About 3pm the shipping supervisor came out and told me that I would have to pull out of the door because they were having to wait on 50 cases coming from another plant and they would be there around 6pm. So, I pulled out and went across the street and sit in a lot for the next 3 hours. # 6;15pm I walked over to shipping and asked if the 50 cases were here and they told me, "no driver, they wont be here until around 10 pm" At that point I lost it. I told the shipping supervisor that I was going to give him 3 choices. Either ship the shipment short, pull your stuff off my trailer, or the third choice, I am going up the road without any paperwork. I told him that he had until 7 pm to make a decision. Well, he called the traffic manager down and when the traffice manager walked into the room he asked me, "you got a problem?"---I replied, "nope, I am about ready to solve my problem"---I gave him the three choices that I had given the shipping supervisor and he replied, "ship it short".

Let's see, longest wait of 10 hours at the Conagra plant in Alton, IL. Second longest was 8 hours at We Pack in Paris, TX. Nope neither of those come close to beating anybody else's. Guess I've been lucky!