Lumper Schlumper

Do that more than once or twice, and you just might get burned. Should the company do any sort of 'audit' or 'check' to see if ACME lumper corp. is actually REAL, you'd lose your job.

but anyway....i was at a US Foodservice couple weeks ago. They said the same thing to me. But i was always under the understanding that most lumper services will not let you use any of their electrical equipment. I was about to do it, then had to jump thru hoops to find the dock foreman. So then i just said 'screw it, guys can do it'. All i had was 5 pallets of plastic garbage bags. it took them 3 hours to unload it !!!! yeah it had to get broke down, etc. but so what. I could have had it unloaded AND broke down in an hour...and that would be me taking my time !!

so it is a trade off. The company will pay $300 to unload a truck, or pay you $50. All depends on when the lumper service will get you unloaded. if they'd do a pretty quick job....i'd say let them do it. if it looks like it will take forever....i'd just accept the trade-off and get the !#$% out of there.

 

Lumpers have been messing up so bad unloading in Tollson AZ (Fry's/Vons etc etc etc etc warehouse) that companies are now taking pictures and doing all likes of stuff to protect their loads, which adds time on the OTHER end of getting loaded.

Isn't it really odd that in the last year, the only time I have had OSD claims have been when LUMPERS have touched the load.

ONLY TIME.

 

As long as the company is paying the lumper I don't care. I don't unload or sort freight, it's my job the drive the truck.

90% of the loads I have that require a lumper have a lumpers fee listed on the bills. I have seem a few places try to charge more, all it takes is a quick phone call to dispatch to sort it out. I love getting paid to bring a load back to the shipper, and then right back to the receiver. It's neat when you drive away from a receiver that really needs the stuff on your truck and they F'ed up playing the lumper game.

Mark

 

What do you O/Os do? Independents, not L/O. After all, it comes out of your pocket.

 

i do most of my own unloading. can make some decent money, over 1500 some weeks. about the only time i dont do it is at places that are getting high cube deliveries. lumpers get mad at me since they say im taking money out of their pockets but they dont stop and realize they are taking money out of my pocket to begin with. they always bring up that we get paid back but that doesnt mean anything to me, still taking it from me.

 

I agree that lumpers are a PIA. However, some things I want to point out. As a former O/O (now retired) I used lumpers. Years ago most receivers would let you use jacks to unload. Then along came OSHA ( got to have a license to run one now). If you get hurt unloading (it can happen) good luck on getting any help. The receiver will not have W/C covering you, the company will say you shouldn"t have been unloading, W/C won't want to pay etc etc etc. In 99% of unloading a lumper can unload it,break it down, and get the Bills signed while you wind up with a back ache and one HELL of a Head ache after the receiver gets thru having you redo the thing. Never saw it to fail. I pulled a reefer for years and dealt with these things weekly,I saw drivers get hurt,drivers restack pallets because one layer was not right,drivers standing around waiting for receivers to count and check etc etc. Just never figured the head ache was worth it. Hauled a load one time that had 8,300 cases on it. Weighed 45000+. Company paid the driver $45 to unload it. Dispatcher told me to get a lumper. He charged $150 BUT it took over 6 hours to break it down and palletize it. He can have the $150.I went to bed. JMO and hopefully some things to think about before you have a back problem and a head ache.

 

Wow I never had those problems. Most places I would load, they loaded the trailer for us anyway. Unloading was usually pretty easy for us. We also had forklift certifications to cover us under OSHA. I still have mine somewhere. When delivering at the company we hauled for they unloaded our trailers for us, since it was their product and it was usually getting broken down and going straight into other trucks for delivery or into the coolers. They had the big electric pallet jacks, and we usually had a manual pallet jack on the trailer in case deliveries played the you can't use our equipment game. Hershey loads were stacked to the ceiling, we wouldn't unload those, just wasn't worth it.

We didn't worry too much about weight either. We were always heavy.