Combination - Picking up a C.H.Robinson load at Morton Salt Hutchinson, KS

I went there on friday with a clean trailer, it had some hairline cracks with light coming thru the wood portion of the trailer floor( wood shrinks in the cool weather??). Morton said the receiver i was going to was anal and the trailer was rejected, Werner wanted me to goto a trailer shop and get it fixed, i refused the load at that point..Ive been to 100 other places to pick up food loads with trailers in the exact same condition and they said not a word...... i didnt have to goto the inspection place but the driver before me did, i asked if i was supposed to have gone there first she said Werner didnt have to,lucky me... i wont go back there.....

 

Had a pretty similar story happen to a driver at Cargill Salt in Breaux Bridge, LA the other week. Truck backed in to dock and was inspected, then they said if he blew the trailer out with a leaf blower it would " probably " be ok. Driver spent 20-30 minutes to then go back to dock for another inspection which dragged out for another hour or two. Trailer was still rejected. The worst part about this was that the load was only going 34 miles down the road. Idiot me thought it would be a "quick" way to add $350 to the day's total. Note to self - no more Cargill Salt in Breaux Bridge, LA. Right up there with no more Rock-Tenn in Stevenson, AL.

 

If light can come thru so can water......

 

I have hauled a lot of loads out of that place as well, if you are actually talking about Morton Salt in "South Hutchinson", Kansas. I was always picking up for their customer and so I never had a problem, though I kept the trailer clean. I did notice that they had CH Robinson notices all around the window area in the office, and I noticed that they seemed to give some drivers fits. You are right about their dock area, dust everywhere, not much room to back in to the dock for a long wheelbase, and generally a good place to stay away from.

The reason that this post caught my eye was that I hauled a load of sea salt out of Cargill in Newark, California and never had a problem loading, but the warehouse was the same as the one on Kansas, and everytime a forklift would run down the isle it would kick up a lot of dust. Each pallet that they loaded, the forklift driver would stop on the dock just before entering the trailer and use an air hose to blow the dust off each skid and the load looked pretty good when he was finished I thought. When I got to the food processor in Dothan, Alabama they held me up for a couple of hours before unloading me, and told me that they found a white dusty "residue" on the pallets, and that they were waiting on the lab results to see what it was before unloading me. They finally unloaded the load and I was able to leave, but that struck me as really odd. I wondered if they hadn't rejected loads before because of this. It could be that Morton has had customers like this before as well. White dusty "residue", gee, let me think here, what could that possible be, on a load of palletized bagged salt..... hhhmmmm.... well, maybe we should send this to the lab and see what this could possibly be... In the society that we live now especially since nine eleven I think that some of the food processors are running scared.

 

A call to OSHA time, just saying.

 

Went to Morton in Rittman , Ohio with an overseas container . The load was salt for A bakery in South Africa. After over 2 hours waiting in line I got to back up to the dock. Another long delay , the dock floor had to be swept with A machine. Like molasses in January. Finally the forklift driver started loading the container , getting the pallets from who knows where . He would load one , come out and go into A black hole , 5 or 10 minutes later come back with another one. Then , with no explanation he started unloading the trailer ! When I inquired about his actions he said " wrong load ". Another worker told me they had failed to use flame hardened pallets as is required for transoceanic shipping. Talk about high blood pressure ! 5 hours to load A 45' floor load ! I live 3 miles from the plant and now notice the dozens of trucks sitting and waiting. I told dispatch I would never go there again. And , talk about rude and nasty on top of it all !

 

I've been to that Morton plant Ohio one time before, never again, that's one place that deserves a big shake- up.

 

Been to the South Hutchinson place a half dozen times. Not that bad. Yes, the trailer must be clean and free of holes, but not "super clean", at least in my experience.

I've for sure been in worst places. Main thing is maintaining the attitude of "I am just a worthless truck driver, and here to massage the egos of of the fork lift drivers."

 

I'd like to know how water that's already moving in a downward motion would suddenly go upward thru a hairline crack.