Driver Lifestyles

Road Report: The Best & Worst

We all remember the "Best Run Ever" and that "Run From Hell", in fact, we've probably told those stories in the truck stop restaurant, parking lot, or just about anywhere expediters gather.

There are those loads that stay with us all of our driving careers - the good ones because they don't occur often enough and the bad ones because we hope we never see them again.

The following story is from Carroll and Dora Bean - one that we wouldn't wish on anyone.  This is the first in what we hope will be a regular feature in Expediters Online.com.  

Compare these stories with your own and if you feel yours are pleasant enough to make an EO reader smile or bad enough to bring him to tears, contact Jeff Jensen, Editor at [email protected].  

Veteran expediters Carroll and Dora Bean say that  they had been with Roberts Express for two years when they were notified that they had been accepted into the White Glove division. Naturally, they were ecstatic when they heard the news.

"I knew it was going to mean increased revenue for us, but we didn't have what I think of as being a White Glove truck; it was your basic 1995 FL70 with a 22' dry van body, no liftgate, nothing special."

"We had an Express-type load that took us to Georgia and almost immediately after we unloaded, we got our first White Glove dispatch.  It was a load for a cosmetics company who had been in Atlanta for the Summer Olympics.  The event had just ended and we were to pick up their shipment in downtown Atlanta and take it to New York City."

"We had to be there at 5:00 AM and the list of items in the shipment totaled 23 pieces.  It included assorted plants, 2 metal bars and odds and ends that we discovered were going to the 17th floor of a building in Manhattan."

"We weren't real happy about that, but we figured it was our first White Glove load, so we'd do it.  We got there at the appropriate time and met with the people who showed us where the material was on the second floor of this building.  There was no dock, so we had parked on Peach street in front of the building."

"We found out what we were in for when they showed us the shipment.  There were easy chairs, folding chairs, the 'assorted plants' turned out to be 12' high TREES in giant pots, desks, glass table tops that had to be pad-wrapped, 30'x*30' curtains that had to be taken down and folded and packaged and the two 'metal bars' were actually two 10' serving  bars, made of stainless steel with padding and built-in refrigerators that probably weighed 600-700 pounds each."

"We had no liftgate or any idea of how to get these things in the truck, but we were new to White Glove and didn't want to bother anyone, so we NEVER CALLED anyone to ask for advice.  We found out later that White Glove was only going by what the customer had told them."

Carroll says that was only the beginning of a very miserable day.  Their contact people showed them how the freight had to be taken out of the building:
It couldn't be taken down by the passenger elevator, but it had to be taken down the freight elevator, down a long hallway in the basement, then to another elevator that went up through the sidewalk.
With no carts to wheel the stuff down the hallways, Carroll tells us that everything had to be carried by hand (luckily, the bars were on wheels).

By the time Carroll and Dora had loaded the truck virtually full, it was 4:00 PM and "hotter than blazes".

So, how did they get the two bars into the truck with no liftgate?

"We got them out to the street and I was trying to figure out how Dora and I could lift these into the truck when I saw six guys coming down the sidewalk and they looked like weightlifters - very well-built."

"I asked them how much it would cost me for them to give me a hand getting the bars in the truck.  They simply said, 'Stand Back', and they lifted the bars into the truck!  When I asked, "How much?', they said, 'Nothing, have a good day'".

Carroll continues, "We were just about to leave when someone from the building came out to tell us that we had another stop to make, but it was just 'some paperwork'.  We drove over to the conference center to pick it up and it turned out to be 3 pallets of product brochures!"

"The only way we could load those skids in an almost completely full truck was break them down and load the heavy boxes by hand.  When we got done, we were so discouraged that Dora looked like she was ready to cry." 

"We totaled up the pieces and it came up to almost 150 pieces, not the 23 were told.  The 22' cargo box was packed and it was 7:00 PM.  I'm sure that we had all of 13,000 pounds on the truck, although we didn't weigh it."

Carroll says that White Glove was upset that they hadn't called because it was so late and also because they shouldn't load that much freight by themselves.

Being so new, Carroll tells us that they didn't want to "rock the boat" by complaining, but by the end of loading the truck, they were ready to leave White Glove.  In fact, White Glove dispatchers mildly chastised them for suffering needlessly, when help was only a phone call away.

So, how did it all end?

"We were concerned about what the unload would be like in Manhattan, but the company said let us know when you get close to delivery and we'll send you some help.  Sure enough, when we got to the building to unload, there were four guys waiting for us." 

"They told Dora to sit in one of the chairs they unloaded and the five of us took care of the delivery.

That took us all day because we had to repeatedly wait to use the freight elevator that all the other deliveries were using as well.  We barely got the elevator unloaded on the final trip up before it shut down for the day!"

"I've hauled just about every kind of freight and pulled all kinds of trailers, including flatbed, but I thought towards the end of this run, I'm not cut out for this kind of freight!"

"Well, it all ends on a happy note because we learned how to properly haul White Glove shipments and we've been with them for ten years now." 

"But, we'll never forget our first run!"