I specifically requested a truck with a lift gate and an electric stacker on the phone yesterday and the guy on the line says , “Yeah, he’ll be there.” Of course, I take his word for it.
Rookie mistake.
Of course, the driver shows up bright and early the next day at 7 a.m., and, of course, he shows up without any material handling equipment. I’ve been there since 6 making sure all the tags are hung and the purchase orders are squared away and the declaration documents are annotated. This is absolutely the last thing I need. The Canada job is next week, and it was a mission to gather all our supplies and pack them up for cross-border shipment. The customs and NAFTA paperwork was more complicated than I thought they’d be and I’d had to stay late to make sure the prep job on the barrels had gone according to plan. They’d arrived naked, with no finish, and we’d had to stain them to match the color palate that had been chosen in the design. I’d stayed late to palletize the signage and the balsa wood animal heads and the jars and here I was early the next morning and dealing with this.
Without the benefit of an electric pallet jack or even a hand pallet jack, we somehow had to manage the thousand pound laden pallets, six in total, onto the back of his truck. Of course, the lift gate was inoperable. Jose said he’d had an accident just yesterday There had been a row of manlifts and work platforms he’d been trying to avoid in the yard he’d pulled into. It looked like he’d backed into the loading dock and busted the latching equipment and probably some hydraulic lines and the controls as well.
Of course Julie was hysterical demanding I call the company back and get Vineet on the line and how dare he-? Frankly, I didn’t have the time or inclination to listen to her tantrums. We needed the pallets on those trucks and in the next shipment or they’d never be ready for the casino job. It was set to start bright and early Monday morning and this gear had to be in country fast.
We had one of those combination dolly/platform trucks, but the tire was busted flat on it and the thing was just about useless. I talk it over with the driver.
He climbs in and pulls out just about the sorriest looking hydraulic lift table and a dented dolly that had definitely seen better days.
It wouldn’t be much of a lift table. And the work platform on the truck was narrow and cramped.
This was gonna be rough.