Hand unloads don't happen often, but nearly every one of them is a surprise, and not very many of them are out the back of the van and up onto the dock. My last load, which was Thursday afternoon, was a hand unload. 14 large and unwieldy boxes, about 50 pounds each, had to be taken from the van into a house through a screened in patio and up to the second floor. I recently had one that was two 1200-pound pallets of mailings that I had to hand unload and take into a post office. That was almost as bad as the 60 trips I had to make with a hand truck up the 32nd floor of an office building in Manhattan. There was a service elevator for that one, but the service elevator door and where I delivered on that floor was like going to Walmart for a two bananas and a quart of engine oil. Sixty times.
You will, more often than you'd think, find yourself having to climb up a flight or two of stairs to get to the shipping/receiving office. Then go back down, get loaded, and then have to go back up again to get your paperwork.
But most often, you'll find yourself walking very long distances from where you parked and entered the building to the shipping/receiving office where you need to go. It's not unusual for someone to point to a spot that's 300 yards on the other side of the factory. You have to walk all the way over there, get the paperwork, then walk all the way back to the van. LTL terminals can be like that, too, where you enter near the office, they tell you to go to the dispatch office, which is way down in the middle of the terminal docks, which is an 1/8 of a mile or more away. If you have problem walking distances, the hand unloads could be a problem, but far more likely is the routine walking you'll have to do at regular pickups and deliveries.
