Loads from Hell By Sandy Long If you have driven any amount of time at all, you will have had a load that just seemed like it was the load from hell. It is the one that nothing you did could satisfy the broker, the dispatcher, the shipper/receiver or everything fell apart. Perhaps it was one where you were injured, or had to load or unload it in hot weather or freezing cold. Many things can happen that make a load a bad one; one thing for sure, those types of loads stick in one’s memory forever. I ran into a driver several years ago that had stitches across a long wound surrounded by swelling and bruises on his face. Asking him what had happened, he related his load from hell story. “I picked up a loaded trailer at a shipper. I found a flat tire and wiring problems doing my pre-trip,” he said. “I spent 4 hours in the shop right at the start. Then before I left the truck stop, I scaled the load. I was over on the trailer tandems. When I tried to slide my tandems, the pins would not pull. Come to find out, one of the springs on the pin assembly was broken, so back to the shop for another hour or two. I finally got to the receiver and went to open the doors. As I opened the handle, it stuck and when I tugged on it, the whole thing flew off and hit me in the face!” A past employer used to like to take off on a run to the North West once or twice a year. He and his wife went out taking a new truck and flatbed with all new equipment, took the scenic routes and reloaded a load of orchard stakes for the return run. Now he had been pulling flatbeds for over 30 years, but he forgot the important thing about hauling stakes; you have to put a little extra dunnage under the front of the front bundle and the rear of the rear bundle or else they will ‘walk’. (Walking is where the stakes or lumber/pipe move to the front or rear of the bundle they are in.) He pulled into the tire shop and was cussing that load. I went around looking to see what had happened. To try to stop the walking of the orchard stakes, he had put on brand new lumber tarps. It did not work. Every stake on the front and rear bundles had holed the tarps and were sticking through a foot or two. So adding injury to insult, he had to replace the tarps…of course; I did not give him a hard time about it all…much. Some loads from hell gain humor with the passage of time. About 20 or so years ago, my co-driver and I picked up a load of oranges in California going to up-state New York. On the way, we broke a transmission line and had to go to the shop. As this was before cell phones and qual-coms, I called the broker and then the receiver telling them both of the problem from a pay phone. I knew there was going to be a little bit of problem with the receiver when he called me a lying b-word about being broken down. My co-driver and I hustled after getting the line fixed and got to the receiver only an hour late. The receiver was a little short balding man who ran from his office as we got onto the dock to check in. He was waving a pistol around as he yelled at us! To say I was scared is an understatement. My co-driver got him calmed down and we proceeded to fingerprint the load off the trailer and left. When we called the broker to report in empty, he told us that no one would go to that receiver’s twice and laughed. About 5 hours later, we were dispatched to go to a neighboring town to pick up a load of salvage oranges to take to the Huntspoint Market auction for delivery the next morning for the same broker that we had just hauled the load that we had just delivered. We went to the shipper’s and backed into the dock. I stayed in the truck doing paperwork as my co-driver went into the shipping office to take care of the bills of lading as we were loaded. As we had been backing in, we had noticed a truck from the earlier receiver pull in and back into the dock next to us; we did not give it much thought. We got loaded and hit the Market on time and the auctioneers were selling the oranges as they were pulled off our trailer. When we got empty and all the oranges were sold, we left and found a phone to call the broker that we were empty. He asked us what had happened the day before at the shippers. When we said nothing, and asked why, he replied, “The guy you brought the load to in that morning said you stole a load of oranges his truck had delivered to where you were loading.” The upshot of the story was that as the shipper’s forklift driver was unloading the receiver’s truck, the person loading us had grabbed the wrong oranges and loaded them on us. We had taken good oranges to the salvage auction and cost the jerk with the gun a sale! It was not our fault though we sweated it for a while, but the broker and the shipper got it straightened out. I can laugh about the whole thing now, but it was a definite load from hell that remains fresh in my memory. Loads from hell are a part of our lives as truckers and one never knows when a load like that will show up. It just goes to show that trucking is not a job it is an adventure.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 05:38:14 +0000
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