Would a 53' footer fit?

Most Swift drivers stop on top of the second car

 

Swift isn't as bad as some. Once had a Werner driver ask me to back his truck into a dock in Rochester NY

 

OOPs! Read thoroughly first CC!

 

I'd say get a 20 but that might be way too high for that dock.

 

The solution is very simple if they refuse to move the parked cars: tell them to load you in the lot with a pallet jack.

There's a particular shipper in the St. Louis area that has a nightmare situation for a 53' truck to get into a dock that leaves 2" clearance to a concrete column on the blind side (and that post has paint from many a trailer), while trying to avoid scraping the back of the trailer on the fork lift ramp (well chipped up ramp), and while trying to avoid a concrete "no go" post exactly where you need to put the tractor in order to avoid hitting the concrete column with your trailer (and the concrete "no go" post is bent over with various paint colors from tractors that hit it)....

... whenever I go there I simply back into their tight alley, open the doors, and say, "Load me with a pallet jack".

Funny thing is if you do get into the dock they don't even have a metal ramp. The forklift driver has to take a running start to get into or out of the van and the edge of the concrete on the dock is worn away to leave a 6" gap. Very dangerous situation and hard on equipment all around. Pallet jack loading is much safer.

 

He better drive into my trailer slowly or I'm going to pull him off that forklift

 

If he tried going slowly into or out of the trailer the forklift wheels would get stuck in the gap and he'd burn rubber trying to get out. It was the weirdest shipping operation I ever saw. It was so inefficient because of the bad dock and "yard" the warehouse folks would stand around and place bets on whether the trucker was going to hit anything on the way into the dock. I saw a trucker take just shy of an hour to get into the hole.... definitely faster and safer in the long run to have them load by pallet jack.

 

To bad everybody doesn't get together and refuse to service a stop like that. I know, I know, there will always be some ho company who will do anything for money. . .

 

... or a driver that doesn't have prior experience with that particular shipper... the gullible one.... "Yeah, everybody gets it in the dock no problem!" I've learned to look for telltale clues when I arrive at a tight dock: paint chips on columns, broken or collapsed fences, etc. If I think there's going to be a safety issue for humans or equipment I'll let dispatch know and tell the shipper or receiver to get a pallet jack out.

The Worst Shippers threads also are helpful. Wish it were more like a database to let us do searches on it, or maybe we could add a layer in Google Earth so we can leave comments. Soon enough shippers like that would be required to use straight trucks and consolidate at a dockable warehouse.