An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

Our flats and steps have it for our broker loads, customer freight provides their own. Our beam trailers of course carry hard wood I try to use mine sparingly

 

Many of the flatbedders I've encountered just throw that on the ground. Someone else's worry.....

 

Gravy. When you get south of Wichita (not Topeka) you just back up to the door and they roll it off the back. They unload asap.

 

East side. There’s only one truck dock on that side, everything else is level garage doors. Roll you flap and pull most of your straps before you back in, sometimes there’s water in the pit.

 

Those dedicated trailers haul the upper wing skins in one piece. The carts you’re hauling are for the lower skin that is made up of multiple smaller pieces.

One of my biggest gripes about SPD is they are terrible about giving the address the driver needs to deliver. I don’t care where their main office is, tell me where security or the truck gate is. At least put it as a note in the dispatch.

Last night I was getting unloaded in Wichita at one of our main customers. I saw one of our trucks go by 3 times in five minutes as I was getting ready to leave. Luckily he had his cb on, I asked him if he was lost. He was trying to find the address on his dispatch. I had him follow me the two miles back to the truck inspection area, where every truck has to go before loading. This particular customer is like a small city,the address he was given was not even within a mile of where he was supposed to load.

He was pretty cool and I was in the right spot to send him down the right path.

 

The place I described is spirit Aerosystems. We load everything from a 10 pound box to super loads out of there.

There’s a decent chance you’ll reload one of those carts and either take it to Texas or right back to where you picked it up.

Our Wichita operation is a little different than the rest of our yards. We have a very large warehouse and have a few local drivers that pick up loads all day long and bring them back to the yard. There we will mix-and-match stops send a truck off in a direction with all the orders for that area.

I think we load between 15 and 20 trucks directly off the yard every week. Mostly with cut aluminum on pallets or in crates Going to all corners of the United States.

If you do go to the yard, make sure you wear your safety vest. You’ll meet Rick, he’ll be the guy on the forklift loading and unloading trucks. When I say he’s A good guy, he’s one of the best people at this company. Bridget is a fleet coordinator and she also does permitting, she’s married to Rick. TY is in the corner office and he’s the central region planner, he’s one that assigns everyone loads. Scott is usually in the office next to him but he’s working from home this week.