Heading into the store this morning to pick up a few items and to price some parts, I was greeted, at eight in the morning, by hearing the unbridled fury of Warehouse Guy in the back of the store at a volume that would be impressive at a rock concert. I might have been barely awake, but every solid time he yells, I wind up with a little bit of entertainment. Coming around the battery rack, the scene unfolds: Warehouse Guy is face-to-face with the delivery driver who drops off parts from the hub. Delivery Driver looks sick to his stomach. Between the two men is the pallet of ordered parts. The yelling has stopped, so I’m not sure what all of this is about. I look at Warehouse Guy, who angrily points to the pallet and gives me a look like, “you don’t see the issue here?!”
Note: Not actual box!
It only took a second. Underneath five boxes of antifreeze, a drive axle and a ton of random crap is the radiator for a Jeep Cherokee XJ. The box is flattened, and I don’t even have to open the box to know that the radiator has been damaged enough that we can’t sell it. This explains on the face of Delivery Doofus: he built the pallet and without really thinking, went largest-to-smallest when he stacked the pallet up. Once the pile of parts was completed he wrapped it up in a ton of shrink-wrap and forklifted it into the truck, drove it a couple hundred miles up to our store, unloaded it and asked Warehouse Guy for the signature on the parts. Once Warehouse Guy exploded like the ticking time bomb that he is, Delivery Dork’s facial expression became the human version of Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” and he basically ceased function.
With the cold snap we’re experiencing, radiators sell well, but most of the time we have to end up ordering one in. So someone who has been waiting for a few days for their Cherokee’s radiator got a call earlier today saying that the delivery driver had his head firmly lodged somewhere dark and humid and destroyed a brand new radiator, and that they will have another one shipped in ASAP. Small wonder why Rock Auto has been snagging sales away from the shops, isn’t it?
“Hmm…’fra-GEE-lay’…must be Italian!”
Anyone who has a job that has a lot of stuff shipped or received knows this story very well. It doesn’t seem like any trucking company is exempt from “accidents” while being paid to move someone’s packages in a safe, efficient manner.
Just after college, my roommate worked at one of those trucking companies in the warehouse in town. Trucks coming and going. The stories he would tell after a day’s work. He lamented about the seemingly talentless fork lift drivers they hired. These people had to take and pass a 40 hr fork lift driving skills and safety class to which all they learned was promptly forgotten the second they got their forklift license. Two notable stories include one guy who was supposed to pick up a pallet with nine 55 gallon drums of oil on it. Only he forgot to lower the forks to go under the pallet and speered 6 of the 9 barrels spilling 300 gallons of oil all over the warehouse floor. One guy drove a loaded forklift out of the wrong loading dock door where there was a truck parked. Scratch one pallet of expensive product and a new fork lift. Same guy drove another lift through the side of the trailer and onto the parking lot.
I briefly use to work at a FedEx after I retired from the US Navy, I saw this shit all the time there, FedEx was more concerned about validations than delivering the items in one piece to the customers. FedEx had one large row in the loading docks dedicated to damaged goods. I will never ship anything through FedEx because I know how they operate.
Our damage claims are outrageous thanks to FedWrex…
Supposedly writing “fragile” on the package at most delivery companies means the employees will use it for a football. I’ve heard if you want them to actually be cautious with the package, mark it “Urine samples”.
A buddy of mines son drive a rig for a local hardware distributor. He deals with this s*** daily. The clowns that load the trailers at night are payed by how many they can load. He takes pics of the wreckage that falls out, but it don’t move those in the corporate office any. Often he has to get a forklift from the dock to pull out skids the were placed sideways that he can’t pull out with his floor jack.
I’ve worked shipping and can safely say I never did that with anything I shipped but saw others do it many times! Now I drive and shake my head on so many occasions at the way some shippers stack a skid. Rectal Cranial Inversion shall live on!
I was a delivery driver for 33 years You are a moron. Fuck you. Get back up to your parts counter and keep asking if my vehicle has AT, AC, etc. so I can replace my license plate bulb.
It’s just like everything else, there are good employees and some that don’t give a shit. Like the UPS guy who chucked the flat screen TV over the fence.
Lmao Amen