Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

Leaving is a favorite trick of mine too.
It usually gets their attention RIGHT NOW. Especially if they need that freight NOW. Like Mack said. We don't have time, or the inclination to wait for a bunch of idiots to finish their circle time.

 

Usually when that happened to me, it was because the boss was nowhere to be seen. Most times, here in good old non union Utah, the workers wouldn't dare pull that crap if the boss was around.
We had one regular customer that was way out in bum fornicate Utah, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Due to our schedule, I usually hit this outfit between 1130 and 1300. And always, they bitcched about my interrupting their lunch. One day, the owner braced me on it.
Now this was not a normally unfriendly bunch of folks, and for that reason, I've been known to unload their freight by myself. Which meant tailgating everything. Getting down, finding their ancient huge forklift in the mud of their yard, and pulling the freight off the back of the trailer.
Well, this old codger started yelling at me, caught me in the wrong mood, and I told him a few things that I won't go into here. So he called the company to complain about the service. I don't think he actually complained about me personally, but the fact that I wasn't waiting for them to open every morning. That went over like a fart in church. My boss told him it wasn't our fault that they were out in the middle of no where, and suggested that maybe he'd like to have his truck pick up the freight at our dock, instead of getting it delivered.
Sometimes, that boss could be a real prince of a guy!

 

I do local truckload food stuff. Well we had a load that delivered to a McDonald's distributor sitting in our yard scheduled for me to deliver the next day. Well they called begging us to deliver it asap cuz they needed the product. So I hurried on up there. When I got there the clerk lady said, whatcha got? I said, apparently something y'all need real bad. She goes, well if it's not scheduled for today, we don't want it. I kinda chuckled and said ok, and slowly walked towards the door knowing what's coming next. Her boss comes running to the window yelling wait we need that. Put him in a door asap.

Was quite the entertainment.

I wish TL was like LTL where you could threaten to leave and they'd get you faster. I threaten to leave and they laugh and say, we didn't want to unload that load anyways. Doesn't work for me lol. Food warehouse deliveries are the armpit of the industry it seems like

Usually when I get low on hours and need to get out of somewhere, I have to threaten to drop my trl so I don't violate my hours. They argue for me to sleep in my truck. That's when I get to explain to them what a day cab is, and why I can't do that.

 

The only proper way to do food is to actually work for the warehouse fleet it's self like I bet Martin-Brower doesn't screw around with there own trucks. I know when I do internal runs for the company I go to the warehouse and cut right through the line and get right into the dock no trouble at all.

 

I have One food warehouse that I deliver to. Occasionally.
It never fails that I get there, only to find out an appointment was made for that load, that is two to three days later than my arrival. They also can't seem to understand that I'm not their holding company. If they refuse, It goes back to the shipper that afternoon.
I'm not hanging on to 4-6 skids of product for them, then fighting to make their insane appointment time.

 

That's what they want, it's some kind of MBA fetish to offload costs. Costco does the same thing, in their weird way of thinking you're paying for the storage space on that bale of toilet paper they sell. To me it just saves several trips to buy the same thing, I don't allocate closet space in my bathroom according to rent per square foot. Costs me more effort to think that way than it's worth.

 

I'm local TL, but have done some loads with 4+ stops on it. I don't think I've had to use a fork lift yet, but I have used an electric pallet jack several times. A couple of times it was either a case of, all my dock guys are home or they just went on their hour lunch. So I snagged a couple pallets off with an electric jack. I used to deliver to a food warehouse once a month where the load was straight pull off, no restacking, they offered you a electric jack to unload yourself instead of paying lumpers. I always did it myself, much quicker that way, plus I like the manual labor you don't get much with TL. Even as a local. I don't think my company has a policy, might be worth me asking to save any possible issues.

Actually. I just remembered one time I had an entire trailer of bottled water to donate. Half of it went to a food bank, half to a fired department. Well they asked if I wanted to use their fork lift, don't gotta ask me twice. At the fire department I backed into a fire trucks bay and we just formed a chain and tossed each case of water. Got a cool picture out of that.

 

I used to do it all the time. All my company had to say was "get the job done."