Quick question on LTL Freight unloading

Honestly depends on your particular route and what the majority of freight is in your particular location.

Running out of Flag, all our delivery trailers had liftgates, because we covered a lot of ground and had to do a little of everything. In a big yard, located in a heavily industrial area, it'll likely be just a standard pup and a pallet jack.

Most deliveries are pre-paid, but smaller businesses still do COD's on occasion. I don't know of any company that accepts cash, however. Check or MO only was how we did it.

 

My route did not have a lot of bumping docks except when it was time for pickups. Mostly pallet jack it to the back of trailer and they would lift it off with fork lift.

Depends on freight the salesman get. I would get a few pallets of paper a week and that crap was mostly hand trucking cases of paper into offices. Was glad when it disappeared.

Something that would tick me off was when I would get a lift gate trailer for 1 delivery and have to deal with raising and lowering the gate at 15 other delivers that didn't need it. I would have rather just hand unloaded the one.

Never dealt with any cash.

 

Oh, lame. We have the tuckunder liftgates, so we only messed with them when we had to.

 

What the Penguin said. You'd better be prepared to do it all. Outfit I worked for in SW Utah, you really did do it all. Including having to pallet jack your load to the tailgate, then break down the pallet and offload by hand, and use a two wheeler to get the crap er freight into stores such as Payless Shoes or beauty supply houses and such. Or cartons of school books to various schools.

Appliances and such to private residences. No unloading equipment at all, except your back and a two wheeler to tail gate it, and then get it to the door, or into the garage of the home.

Some accounts we'd tail gate the load, then use the customer's fork lift to take the pallets inside, where an office girl who didn't even see the load, would be the only one working, and would sign the tickets on blind faith. Or you could be using a lift gate with a pallet jack.

Or you could have weird size/shape loads, such as a load of utility trailer axles that should have been shipped on a skateboard, but were shipped as LTL in a box truck. These were exceptional fun to get out when the bands on them would break and they would shift all over the inside of the pup.

Or odd size pieces of industrial equipment. I delivered a huge piece of wood working equipment to a carpenter shop one time, where the freight had moved and tipped in the truck. They actually could not unload it with their fork lifts on hand, and had to borrow one of those Gradall construction fork lifts with the telescoping arm on it to try to reposition it.

Yeah, we bumped a lot of docks, and had a lot of "boring" days. But we also had the variety that made up for the boredom.

Get a pick up to a junk yard, where you have to explain, (often in language that was understandable to the junk yard employee,) why you were NOT going to allow him to put that old engine that was covered with grease and dripping oil on your trailer. (Of course they were told this when they'd call in for pick up, and always assure the customer service rep that the engine would be "all cleaned up and packaged properly"...)

The customer who was a hazmat manufacturer that required you to wear special protective equipment on their property. And would then have an employee who would not have the proper placards available. . .

Great fun. . .

 

Yep, Don definitely has Been There. But I'd really rather peddle than just drive all day--it's always a challenge, and usually the customers are happy to see you(as opposed to grocery warehouses for example). I just took my current road position so I could get into the yard near my house.

 

I also liked the variety of what I pulled. Could be just pups all day, or could vary between pups and long boxes, or sets, or rockies. It was just all around decent work, and a good outfit to work for.

 

When messing with LTL, I always liked the Linehauls. Mostly just pull from terminal to terminal, drop and hook and go back home. Did that for 5 years, loved it!

 

Mind sharing the outfit's name? Here or PM...

 

Yeah, I don't think any LTL uses electric jacks either. Manual jacking a 3k pallet of cement bags on a tailgate then breaking it down ain't no fun. It's everything from what heard. I'll stick to Linehaul.