main advantages of swing doors?

Like you said, easier to maintain, can haul more
freight, plus less expensive. I have seen several
times where freight will fall against sliding doors
and a dockworker will use a forklift to get it open,
sometimes destroying things.

But I liked making deliveries with sliding doors
better, of course, as long as they worked.

 

It just depends on what you are doing. If you are doing a lot of LTL where you are in and out of the truck thirty or more times a shift, the roll up doors have an advantage. Other than that, they are just a PITA.

It seems that in no time at all, the rollers will loosen up, some rocket scientist on a fork lift will mangle the tracks, and the handle will break. Add to that the true enjoyment you will have if you forget to stand clear of the packed snow and ice when you open them.

I don't have any idea how many times I've had to "fork open" a messed up door to unload freight.

 

There's just nothing like doing 25-35 P&Ds a day with swing doors and a cabover that has no A/C or power steering.

 

I like cabovers. I have driven and owned them for years, but climb in and out of one 25-35 times every day and it gets old real fast.

Back up, get out, open the doors, get in, back to dock, get out, unload or load, get in, pull up, get out, shut doors, get in, go to next stop. Repeat 25 times today, tomorrow, the next day.....

 

You pretty much said it!

 

the difference is purely dimensional. roll up doors have a frame and track that take up quite a few inches of height and width that many shippers require for loading, especially paper products (toilet paper is just one example).

i've been to shippers that load 4 pallets at a time (double stacked and two wide), breaking them down and loading or unloading them single cuts productivity and hurts the bottom line.

 

I take it you work for an LTL company? Doesn't your supervisor take pictures of the trailers that come in like that or fill out some form to make the other terminal aware that trailers are coming into your location poorly loaded and dangerous? If they don't they need to.