Your most pain in the ### freight

Back in 80s when my dad did ltl he did a lot of coffee. This was in north jersey-nyc. Hand load-unload 132lb bags or do the same with groceries all day.

 

Silly question but, why don't LTL outfits buy some electric pallet jacks to have for certain deliveries where they would be beneficial? I work in chemical distribution and we only have electric jacks. We have a couple manuals for spares but, they never move as nobody would use one. If you think I'm going to roll around a 4,200 lb tote of caustic soda with a manual jack, you've lost your mind.

 

Not a silly question at all. We had one for a short time. It was ideal for totes and Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery gets like 8+ crates of gravesite markers EVERY day, and they don't have a dock. And it's murder man. Anyway, we had one and idiots would either fill up throughout the day and leave it somewhere, or would try to use it on a liftgate delivery and zing it off a liftgate 5 feet in the air deeming it inoperable . In theory it's a fantastic idea. When used by competent people. And there within lies the problem when your hiring process is "are you breathing?". Which is what ours was.

 

McCormic Spices. The little plastic, glass and tin containers, something like 6 to a case which isnt larger than say your lunchbox thermos. Toss about 6000 of the critters onto the floor and hand over a BOL stack about 3 inches thick, all of which needs checking off on delivery.

There you are in the back of the trailer checking off two sets of numbers off each one of those little containers against the stack of papers. 5 hours in, they usually take pity and send in 8 people to clear the last half of the load relatively quickly.

My ultimate favorite PIA load was a load of matches. That went to a Richmond Depot (Military) They told me to hit the rack (Sleeper) and will get me when done. 11 hours later I wake up ready to go and they havent gotten 1/3 back into the matches in that trailer. 4 soldiers counting matches in each little container, something like 50 or 100 of them I forget.

It was another 6 hours before they finally took it off. They added manpower to count. And count. And count some more.

That was by chance my very last depot load. Thank god. If you are going to go out, that would be one way to do it.

 

It's simple. MONEY. As @motocross25 said, if people would take care of company equipment, I'm betting that even the cheapest dirt bag LTL outfits would spring for them. Saves time, energy and most of all INJURY.
But those things are expensive. And when the drivers have proven over and over again, that they will not take care of company equipment, who can blame the company for not buying them. Oh sure, it's easy to say that" the company should get rid of this type of employee," but the fact is that finding GOOD, RESPONSIBLE driver's is hard to do. In fact, in some areas it is flatly impossible to do.
Yeah, you can say "the company needs to pay a decent wage," but union companies definitely DO pay a decent wage. And a few non union outfits have decent pay and benefits. Does this make employees become more responsible? Not even.

 

This could not be truer. I guess I'm just naive because it's not a problem for me. But when people would come in to fill applications at Estes before they'd even hand them one they'd ask "can you pass a drug test?" "You're sure? Because don't waste your time or my time if not". And quite a few people I would see "run and get something out of their car real quick" only to be seen driving out of the gate.

 

@MACK E-6 - you've done medical facility drops, yeah?

I'd think a truck load of suppositories might be a pain in the ###... Maybe not for the driver, but an impending pain for someone soon enough.