My first time rejecting a shipper load

so I'm coming out of Lowes and the guy ahead of me has a pickup, with about 100 2X4Xdon't know. Long.
He stops at light. Pulls out, and drops all but bottom row on the road.
He had 1 strap across the front. There's your overhang and load securement.
I drove around him.

 

So Much BETTER things to haul in Baltimore than Lumber- Shoot- You could get Aluminum- Steel- all day going anywhere and NO PORT either......

Don't like Steel? Shoot up to Frederick or York and Grab Uniformed palletized material paying a bunch more than a lumber disaster in Sparrows Point-

That Mill in Sparrows don't ship coils no more?

 

With a step deck,.. you routinely get stacked high/tall on your lower deck. 8ft is nothing,.. try 10+ft. All kinds of different commodities. 1" PVC pipe,.. they can get more on a step than a regular flat and the bracing they use is a joke. It wiggles back there like a waterbed. Styrofoam insulation panels. Fiberglass pipe. Those cheap pressed wood laminated panels with wax paper in between the layers,. those are like greased piggies,.. and will shift in a New York second if not strapped correctly.

For the most part I dont do lumber at all. Not by choice,.. but because they want you to be able to scale at least 48k. My Fontaine/Columbia maxes out at 45.5k And my MAC/KW maxes out at 46.3k. That and I have yet to see lumber rates anywhere paying anything worth waking up for. No offense.

My solution is to just add more straps and do it in layers. Then just take your time and watch your turns.

I can understand not wanting the overhang. But securing tall stacked loads is something I have come to terms with and its like anything else in this business.

Hurst

 

A load is a load. I make it work no matter what. I have never turned down a load. I work with the shipper. I let him know it’s not gonna work sometimes the way they load it. So we adjust it and make it work and tell him why. You have to work together. Maybe it’s the many years of experience I have in flatbed. But I just about seen it all. I hauled loads that make you say, wtf, how did he secure that. Anyways..... I may spend half a day loading and securing and even longer, but I get it done. My motto, you take the good with the bad. Like mentioned earlier, it was 1/3 of the load. Long as you legal in weight, secure it and roll. I have a 20 foot tower crane section, 9 foot was over hanging of the back, (had over equipment in front) so I just threw some extra securement amd rolled.

 

There is no mill left anymore. They toppled L tower not too long ago. One of the highest there is.

York to me is brick country as was Williamsport. I remember another brick yard near what I think was Red Lion that was a two mile trip across fields, through the woods and all that Disney scenery to get to it. Ive tried to find it on google earth, it does not compute well.

 

No I wasn't going to have the almost 4 foot overhang off the back on a 10 foot bundle. With the DOT looking for reasons to pull trucks over I'm sure that would have caught his attention. But anyway this is the main point. The forklift guy radio back to warehouse guy and said this has over 3 feet overhang.
The warehouse guy radios back in a sharp tone saying "thats what he's getting and if he doesn't like it he can leave"

They must have tried to push the other 3 drivers that told the girl in the office to unload their trailers too.

So I said take it off I'm going home.

 

Every place i picked up pipe and what not. Makes the drivers strap layers. I"m guessing they probably had problems in the past and already know and teach the loaders to prevent further problems.

Lumber, however, just don't care.

I liked hauling 8 foot loads on steps. The 10 foot loads sucked. Specially in the wind and straps the company gives you that aren't full length. Or long enough for that matter. 40 foot straps aren't worth buying for some reason.

 

No, it isn't. That was insufficient load securement, as demonstrated by the mess left in the road. I'm guessing it was likely a 1" strap, which doesn't even come close to meeting the standards required, and even if it WERE bigger, it likely wasn't hooked to anything substantial. I was talking about a pair of 4" straps, hooked to the normal places on a flatbed trailer, at the front of the bundle and another 4" strap at the rear of the trailer.

 

My point was, you can just about put anything on a flat, what I do is work with the forklift operator and say, “this isn’t gonna work. Is there another way, or let’s try it this way”. I have done it this way countless of times and at the end they thank me for working with them. Sometimes you may get a new loader and he only knows to load it one way. “You” may be his teacher in how to load the next truck. Anyways, you was there and I wasn’t. I just know as a FACT, that I would of made it work. Even with an attitude from the warehouse guy, I still make it work. It’s called patients, and you gain it through the years. The over hang you speak of is no big deal, you still had 2/3’s of the lumber on the deck. And the DOT won’t have a field day with you if you throw some “extra” securement to make it look good. So tell me, did rejecting that load cost you another days of work ? I do lots of OVERSIZED load and I get lots of over hang of the back. I always measure or eyeball my load so if it looks like over hang of the back, I have him start loading me a few feet over from the front. All I’m saying to you is be wised, smart, and patient when loading. Show that your a professional and you can make it work. Goodluck to you.

 

This is what I do as well. Not knocking him for rejecting a load. I have rejected a few myself. But in my opinion,.. its in my best interest if the load is paying well to work with the shipper so as to not put the broker I booked the load with into a bad way with the shipper for rejecting the load. Not to mention it will typically result in a wasted day,. no money and the dead head to where ever the next load will be.

Making the difficult loads secure on my deck, delivering them with out damage and within a reasonable time frame is how I have built my reputation with the brokers I work with. This is why my phone rings 20 - 30 times a day.



Hurst