Lumper

A lumper is a hired person, usually of an unskilled nature, employed to unload freight.


Lumpers - Service or Scam?

How many times has this happened to you? You show up at a warehouse to make a delivery. You walk in smiling. You pleasantly hand your papers to the receive and say "hi, I have a delivery for you." The receive looks at your paper work, then asks "do you need a lumper, or are you going to unload it yourself?"
Your smile is suddenly gone as you realize that your day may have just been ruined. A whole bunch of thoughts and questions race through your brain as you wrestle with this unexpected problem. Is the product heavy? Do I have to re-stack every box, or just break each skid down to a certain level? Will a lumper get me out of here quicker than I could? How much money will it cost? Do I have enough cash on me? Will it cost more than my company is willing to pay? Will they purposely try to make it difficult for me?

For some reason, many trucking companies will pay a lumper more money for this task than they will their own driver. Most lumpers will demand anywhere from $60.00 to $150.00. While most companies are willing to pay lumpers what ever they ask, they will only pay their drivers about $40.00 to $60.00 for the same exact job. Companies claim that they do this because they want to discourage drivers from wasting all their energy on physical labor, so that they have more energy to drive, when they leave. However, I question their motivation. Why should it matter who does it? if a company is willing to pay a lumper $150.00, then they should offer their driver $150.00. Its only fair.
More here>>>>>>>>>>>http://www.skaggmo.addr.com/lumpers.htm
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A pallet
Skid loader = fork lift or pallet jack

 

I never did agree with that either. There were a lot of loads I would gladly pay lumpers for, that had a butt load of handling to be done, but when I hit a dock that provided a fork lift etc. and all that had to be done was move once to a inspection zone, when cleared move again to a freezer (I ran reefer) and the company I worrked for would only pay drivers 60 to unload and the lumpers at these docks would get 150 (specially when you were in a predominently illegal immigrant area).... I can tell you back then Jose Conseco unloaded quite a few of my trucks at 150+.......

 

a professinal rippoff artist!

 

How did you, uhh, Jose cash the checks?

 

ive heard of some drivers "hireing" a lumper ask the lumper how much they charge then write a comcheck to them selves making more than the company would pay them.

 

Also this is what Nobody is supposed to do with fork lifts !! Osha would have a hay day with this company for lifting a forklift with a forklift !!!!
The correct procedure is a correct forklift that can go the distance or a crane or boom type truck or lift .
But you will see and hear of people doing what you see pictured and it IS dangerous and against Osha law .

 

This was how..

Now with 2 herniated disks under recovery and the way we have to run our logs.. It really isn't worth unloading the truck if you have a good DM... and for me, its not worth running the chance of popping another disk...2 was enough in one lifetime....