Might as well mix in at least a little drama before it was time to go home, right? I rolled over to the consignee this morning and checked in with the forklift guy. He gave me the instructions that I expected - wait for the other trucks to leave the docks and then it would be my turn. After an hour or so, my turn came around.
One pallet came off without incident. A second came off without incident. The third had some busted boards on the pallet, but it was in somewhat decent shape. Then things got ugly. I was waiting for someone to point the finger at me as if I had ramped the trailer off a ski jump or something. The forklift guy seemed to have known that the issue was coming though. He said that he had been told to watch out for exactly this issue. Apparently the product had come from overseas on a boat. Then the shipping container was pulled to a logistics warehouse by truck. At the logistics place, the pallets were pulled out of the shipping container and put into our trailer. At some point along the way, something went wrong to the extent that a phone call was made to the consignee and a notation was made on the bills. "Few pallets damaged from container," the notation said. Understatement.
Long story short - there were several pallets that were completely crushed. The freight consisted of thick-walled metal cylinders and they were quite heavy. Thus, the boxes holding the freight had been torn apart as the weight shifted on the broken pallets. The forklift guy, his boss, and my Swedish buddy Sjoe wound up filling a couple of portable hoppers by hand. That took a little while. The other pallets stayed mostly intact to the extent that they could be unloaded by forklift. Good enough.
After bouncing over to the Flying J and parking to await my next assignment, I found myself on the board at #10. I tried to take a nap. You know... either I work for a bunch of morons (who send idiotic messages for no reason) or I work with a bunch of morons (who are confused by the first idiotic messages, requiring more to be sent). The answer, I assume, would depend on whom you ask. A series of satellite messages conspired to keep me from getting any sleep. First came a message to say that they need to know by the 16th if people are going home for Christmas. Another message to tell people that the first had been sent to everyone. Then another clarifying whatever the first one meant. Then something about locking trailers even when they're empty or whatever. I think there was something else along the way, but the point is that I never got a chance to fall asleep.
At 10:30am, after two hours on the board, I received the assignment that I expected - homeward bound. The benefit of sitting for two hours was that I missed the heaviest of the morning traffic on I-96. It was a little bit rainy outside and the roads were slick, so things weren't moving terribly quickly, but it was an easy enough drive.
After dropping my empty trailer and heading home, I found that I wasn't in the mood to do much of anything. Just taking a day to kick back and relax. The smart money would be on tomorrow following a similar pattern. I'll probably be forced to drink some beer tomorrow though. You know how that goes.
I thought the exact same thing when those messages came through. Its sad when 3 corrective messages need to be sent to further expand on the first because common sense lacks.
ReplyDeleteIt's right up there with the damned recruiting contest updates. Some chucklehead sets up a website that manages to convince a few people that nothing bad ever happens with this company. The company blows $25,000 bucks to recruit a few drivers who will probably quit within a year. Then my vivid dreams of a pillow fight between Christine Dolce and myself have to be interrupted by a dumbass satellite message in the middle of my afternoon nap.
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