How inevitable are driver-unfriendly loads at a typical dry van company?

How exactly do you wrangle a 10 ft long thing onto the lift gate? Do you drag it over the edge and let it dangle? Seems pretty dangerous any way you might try it.

 

This is right to a point. I take less desirable loads with the good ones, it's part of the job. But, I've come to recognize the difference between taking some "bad" ones, and being taken advantage of. Fortunately, I've rarely seen loads of the latter nature. It's all about balance, life is like that.

 

My version of “driver unfriendly”: I had to wait seven hours to get a load of paper recycling unloaded last Wednesday, I then picked up a load from the same paper mill that was scheduled for delivery the following day at noon... 750 miles away. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Here’s another one: a load of plastic recycling going to a place in Laredo that was out in the sticks about 15 miles northwest of town. 10 am scheduled delivery. I got there at 9:30, the place is locked up tight. After no one showed up at 10 or 10:30, I started making phone calls, eventually discovering that the place was closed until Monday morning. I had to take the load back to our drop yard in Houston (and they had to cancel the load I was scheduled to pick up in Laredo later that day).

Here’s the thing: #### happens. My job is usually pretty easy, I really can’t complain.

 

Depends where the weight is in the trailer

 

As somebody who has to make my own delivery schedule most of the time you learn to call the customer, or at least figure out it's a good idea to check google for their hours.

 

Driver unfriendly? Oh man, someone has been pulling your leg. Every day is a holiday when you’re a truck driver. Trust me on this!

 

Well, brother, It Just So Happens that this very day was a little challenging...!!

Three stops in Jerome, AZ. Yep, three.

First one is 500# of glass in 10 bags to a glassblower. Now, this guy is a really cool individual, but his studio is down a dirt street at about a 6% grade, and being Friday in Jerome on the first nice weekend day of the year, made things Not Fun as far as parking. I ended up having to unload the bags and my dolly, run around the block and park on a one-way street so traffic could get by me, and run two trips of very heavy glass.

Second is a mine/sawmill/ghost town/tourist trap at the end of the pavement, and no matter where you park, some tourist wants to leave immediately. If my truck takes up 352sqft, I found a 360sqft space to park where people weren't getting all sideways and giving me the bird.

Third was a restaurant that I usually do by parking in the loading zone across the road and jacking across the street. Not this time--the loading zone (just big enough for my truck if I think small thoughts) is took up with a linen truck. Run a mile up the road, turn around at the rest area, come on back...nope, Linen Company still there. Throw the 4-ways on, stop in the middle of the road and make it happen to the chorus of horns.

This was after I hauled 2K# of cigar boxes on two skids off the liftgate, through gravel and up a sidewalk with one centimeter of clearance between a wall and vehicle bumper. I can't complain, however--delivering to tobacconists, breweries and wineries is how I keep my ear to the ground concerning things I like. (I'd include grow-ops, but that has to wait until the Feds relax their restrictions.)

This doesn't include the heavy HVAC units I had to wrestle to the tail because leaving them on the skids would have taken up too much room. It certainly doesn't include my last stop down 10 miles of forest service road that knocked my kidneys out my nostrils, only to discover that a working farm has a lintel that's too low for a truck to get through their gate, and the customer doesn't answer the phone.

This was today. Dead serious. I'm not assembling a compilation of random crap throughout my career--this was just today. And it's by far not the worst day I've had on this job.

Thing is, I love this job, and I'm compensated very well for it. Some folks seem to think I should be grateful to be paid $3.50/hr and gargle the boss' man chowder. To which I say, 'nah, brah.'