Least favorite places to deliver?

Its not the waiting part that bothers me, its the " Not my job part B.S." that ticks me off. Your getting a paycheck, get off your butt and get on that towmotor and get your crap off my trailer!

 

This one particular farm I've gone to outside Scranton Pa. . This little town right outside that's like mainstreet usa.. drug store general store barbershop etc etc etc curbside parking..I had to take a side street in the rinkydink town...take another sidestreet of the sidestreet I originally took....residential srea might I say..take this street about a mile and a half till I got to. The street that this egg farm is located on...this road looked more like somebodys driveway than a street... After three miles up I began questioning my judgement on going up this dumb street where people are outfront lookin at me funny like they've never seen a big truck going up their street/driveway so to speak... about another mile up this 12percent grade twisting turning road....much to my relief...the farm!!! Three semis there backed into dock doors along side the barn....

 

Some stops are definitely worse than others. I hate the big huge places in general where it takes 15 minutes just to figure out where you need to be if you've never been in there before. You just have to remind yourself, hey, I'm paid by the hour. If a stop turns into a 3 ring circus poop show, it is what it is. You just gotta grin and bear it and get the job done.

 

That is a fact. You need to remember who the customer is, and play by their rules. At least for the most part. If you want to keep your job.

 

The Ralph's Warehouse in San Fernando, CA. I was there all day and it was 100 degrees out. I had no apu and they don't let you idle in the yard. You have to wait in the truck and listen to the CB to get a dock. Then once you get a dock it is almost impossible to back the trailer in. That was a bad day all around! Never went back there again. I complained so much to dispatch that they gave me an extra 150 bucks to shut me up lol! I was OTR then.

 

This is from the perspective of a contract/delivery cargo van driver, us small guys have our "painful" days too.

1. Large office buildings in downtown areas, no good place to park, a treasure hunt/scavenger hunt to find the service entrance and which entrance you're supposed to use. Not the same one for every tenant it seems.

2. Big city colleges and universities. Address is the main building, but the delivery is 2 blocks away, in "X" building, and you need a copy of the campus map. Had one package that had a deliver to address that didn't actually exist, after 3 attempts at contacting the customer got directions on where to deliver and who to deliver it to. The person didn't want to sign for it because it was "not his job to sign for her package" Both the universities that were on my route had no central mail room, so you had to find out where the person's office was and deliver direct to the office. Big time waster, remember, I'm getting paid by the piece I deliver, not by the hour.

3. Airports.... can't stop and unload and deliver in a waiting area, have to park in short term...and pay 5 bucks to park to delver a package I'll make 2 bucks on. Somehow I find that "undeliverable" Another place where you have to deliver to the exact person that ordered the item, and they never seem to be at their office.

4. Main post office buildings... not talking bulk mail pickup or delivery, that's a piece of cake, would do that all day long. I'm talking say a printer cartridge to someone in some administrative department, who you can't actually get in to see, but no one will take and sign for the package. Now I'm getting all of 4 bucks to deliver this cartridge, spent 2 bucks getting there, and 45 minutes finding someone to sign for the package. Fun, not. However, I did discover why the USPS can't turn a profit. Unfortunately it contributes to me not turning a profit.

5. Private residences in the inner city. I'm talking houses in neighborhoods where all the other houses are boarded up or burned out. Never quite sure if I'm going to make it out alive on those deliveries. Not like I'm driving a UPS or Fedex van, just a white cargo van, and I'm not wearing a uniform. Maybe that's for the best in that case though.

On the flip side, you do get to see some interesting things, a salvage yard in the inner cities with junked Chinook and Sikorsky helicopters, and few old jet fighters being busted up for scrap. Also delivered to the farm of the Busch family as in Budweiser, saw a newborn camel. A drive out to the far suburbs/countryside on a nice spring day, all worth it.

 

Top of the lists is by all means any Federal Site. Savannah River Site to name the main one. Wait for an hour at first office just to watch a movie to get a visitors badge to go to the next barricade.Then you sit and wait for the rent a cops to get more then one truck so they can escort you to receiving area 10 miles away did I mention parade speed the whole way. Walk inside office for receiving nice and polite office worker (you wish) tells you to sit in drivers room until we unload . An hour later if you are lucky they are done . Now we get to reverse all steps . If you are lucky it is a 3 hour delivery for a pallet of freight. Next on the lists by all means is home delivery of dialysis fluid royal pain in the arse..........20 years of LTL and I retired to the other division OTR home weekends and love it, will never return to LTL.
Might as well ad in the LTL drivers guaranteed all day unload Wally World distribution center in Laurens Sc..............

 

This just reminded me of my FedEx Ground days and how much I don't miss that lol

 

Stores. Any store. Takes them forever to unload because most of em do not have forklifts, deliveries at odd hours (when the store is closed), employees have poor attitude because they HAD to come in earlier/stay longer just to unload you by hand. Just a terrible experience. I'm glad I do linehaul now.

 

Delivered to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, had to do go through the bomb sniffing dog bit. Was hoping the previous owner of the van didn't carry anything shady. No watching video tapes or parades though. A federal Job Corps site was one of the more bizarre deliveries come to think of it, two pieces of flat pack furniture, had to go through security to get in the site, get badges etc, then get to the receiving dock to find no one there, had to wander around the facility on my own to find someone. When I did find someone they were like"'how did you get in, you're not supposed to be here" I'm like "well, security let me in the front gate, sent me back here no one stopped me" Nice apartments for folks in the Job Corps program on the governments dime, nicer than I can afford...