Those lumpers!!!

Against my better judgement I'm on a food load now delivery to a Safeway DC in Washington state. The pickup was at some obscure named cold storage facility in central CA. When I arrived I saw the big sign and bowed my head in disgust. It was Americold. Had I known, I wouldn't have taken the job at any price. As suspected it took 6+ hours to get loaded and now I'll be at least an hour late for the delivery appointment. No lumper fee at Americold, but the pallets looked like a 5 year old loaded them. 20 pallets loaded just a couple feet from the doors, so I know there are quite a few pallets in there that aren't packed against one another, so I'm half expecting a mess when I arrive in Washington tomorrow. They'll probably want a huge lumper fee to restack pallets that have fallen over.

Lumpers are what you get when labor unions call the shots.

 

Lumpers, and dock workers/ miserable cun+s in the office checking in, is why my lazy ### is finally dragging my wet kit out of the storage trailer this weekend

 

Lumpers made me HATE reefer.
Never again

 

My three rules with lumpers are,

1) I want to see a forklift certification from the employee you're paying $10 a hour and charging $200 for, or I'm doing it myself and they can sort and count it. No offense to them but I'm not allowing a 19 year old that can't speak English drive a few thousand pounds of metal forks into my trailer.

2) My truck isn't moving until I have signed BOLs in my hand. This applies everywhere I go, not just lumper places. Loading/Unloading is not complete until I have the paperwork confirming it. But with lumpers in particular, I'm not moving to some parking area so I have to wait two more hours for you to process my check and sign my BOLs.

3) Just out of spite, the time it takes you to twirl your finger through your hair and play on your phone while I stand at the check-in window is the amount of time I'm going to stand there and stare at you holding your lumper check just out of reach.

 

It is there is a form on fmcsa website to fill out and they will contact and follow up with complaint

 

I wonder if anyone around here is familiar with the ins and outs of Capstone. I mean im really curious how exactly they are directing their employees to operate

 

My issue is damage. Most lumping companies are fly by night companies that will change name and ownership at the dtop of a hat. Run their forks through your bulkhead? Well, shipper points to Bob's lumping Inc as that's the company responsible. Either will take months to get the various insurance companies to figure out who pays, or Bob's is now called Tom's lumping Inc with new owners so no way to get paid for the damage.
And that's just one way it's a big deal.