The day to day ramblings of the LTL business.

Our terminals are so small, none of them have any security. . hell, one barn doesn't even have a fence line or gate.

 

Today I had a fairly well loaded trailer. Busy as well had 6 stops off before 7am.

It's fall now getting darker in the morning.

 

Not in policy to get the job done then? Really, you do what you have to do to get the job done...
I'd have been stranded up old schidt creek, if our hands had been tied like that!

 

Heck , would have been a fun day... What are they going do ? Fire you !!!

 

Then they can wait till the next day. Unless they'd rather drive down to the dock and pick it up in person!

I got my butt royally ripped one time by a housewife. We had a residential delivery of what ever...
Any way I get stopped in front of the house, and by the time I'd gotten out of the cab, Lady Dracula had come from the house just screaming at me.
It turned out that they were running a business out of their home. They had a few concerns there. First, this was an upscale neighborhood and was not zoned for commercial use. Second they had no business license. Third the CCRs of that subdivision did not allow them to run a business there. Fourth, they were such jerks that the neighbors had already complained to both the homeowners association, and the city about them having a business there. They had been warned to discontinue, and had assured all parties involved that they were no longer working out of their home.
Anyway, she was bellowing that they had an agreement that they would pick up shipments at our dock, and had been doing so for years.
Two problems with that, the customer, (shipper,) did not note anything about a dock pickup on the shipping papers. And this was the first time the customer had used us for this consignee.
Of course I didn't know all this at the time, so was slightly put out by her demeanor. So anyway, I apologized to her, and got back in the truck. I called dispatch on the Nextel, to let them know this delivery would be a dock pickup, and I'd bring it in after completing my drops.
Now, Lady Dracula is back at my driver's door, screaming at me to get the truck away from the house.
Anyway, I found out what the back story was on this in just a conversation with one of her neighbors, who happens to be both a nice guy, and another one of our customers.

 

When I was a beer truck driver I was standing in the waiting line behind a big box store that is very popular here in America (won't mention names) any how I was talking to a bread guy and he was telling me about at time back in 1998, when he had a delivery at another location of the same big box store and the back room was so cluterred and hard to get through that he couldn't get his bread in and the GM of that store basically told them to bad we aint cleaning it up.

That bread truck driver then said "Fine two people can play at this game." He went to a pay phone changed his voice to sound like a 16 year old girl posing as an employee and made a call to the State Fire Marshal to report a fire hazard at the big box mart.

He said the next week when he went in there the back room had an isle so wide open you could drive a truck through it.