Must have been skip day

[gotta go]

I was scheduled to deliver at 0800, yesterday, got to the customer about 0730. All three gates were locked, no sign of any cars, no guard shack. About 0745 a guy rides up on a bicycle, unlocks the gate for the employee parking lot, and goes into the building. At 0800 there had been no more sign of activity. I rang the bell at the office door with no response. As I stand there a car pulls in. When the man got out, he was looking around, too. He told me which dock to use, if he could find a key to the gate. Well 'bike man' had a key, so I was in business.
It turns out no one else had come to work. The day before they had been out of work because they needed the product I was delivering. I saw humor in the situation and must say at least my truck was unloaded quickly. The fellow that had arrived in the car kept saying, "I have to call my boss, no one's here".

Have you ever had something similar happen?

 

[ChrisGa23]

I have. It was during the summer this year. Had a Saturday delivery to a place ( forgot where ) got there not one car. Sat for an hour till it was time for my delivery still no one there. Waited another 30 min and a bolt driver came up . Talked to him said he had a delivery also same time. Well we sat and talked for 30 min and still no one showed up. He called in and I called dispatch and let them know and see if they can reach someone. Fast forward to maybe another hour a guy pulls up. Said no one was supposed to work that day and asked why we were scheduled for Saturday. I showed him the QC for proof and eventually he let us in. He said he wasnt aware of any shipments and they never work on Saturdays. Guess us drivers never get the memo till we are actually there waiting for a long time

 

[ATeam]

Funny deliveries like this happen every now and then. People on the shipping end are nuttso-crazy to get 'er done but people on the receiving end don't care or may not even know what's up.

-- Shipper pays expediter thousands of dollars to rush a box of plastic dashboard knobs to a farm tractor manufacturer. Deal is the knob company must pay tractor company big, big bucks if the assembly line goes down. At the delivery, the union guys refused to unload us until after lunch.

-- On a holiday weekend we deadheaded from Oregon to Arizona to pick up one bottle of compressed gas that was urgently needed in PA. At the delivery, the guy had no idea the bottle was coming and directed us to unload it in an obscure part of a massive place that had tens of thousands of square feet of bottles of various kinds.

-- Picked up scientific equipment in Denver. Met there by eight high-level people at the company who wanted to make sure it was picked up, secured right and delivered on time. At delivery, company said they did not want the devices until the next day and asked FedEx to store them at a FedEx facility. the company would send a truck to get them the next day.

 

[gotta go]

I'm with you, Phil, about the goofy deliveries where they don't expect us.
What got me about this one was that the 2 who were at work had no idea where everyone else was. The plant schedule was to work from 0800 to 1200. Whoops

 

[jjoerger]

We had one a few months ago where our carrier and the shipper both told us it had to be delivered by 1700 on friday. The delivery time was confirmed and we got there around 1300.
The place was deserted and the sign on the door said they close at 1200 on Friday.
We finally delivered at 0800 on Monday.
The detention pay was great.