Just a few weeks ago, turning east out of Hutchinson, I noticed a derailed Union Pacific freight train. Several railcars hauling new Fords crashed on a cliffside, spilling their spotless cargo all over the hill. I wondered if maybe I could find a good deal.
The answer I learned later was no. Even the undamaged freight still strapped in the wrecked train cars were destined for the scrap yard, along with my dream of owning a brand new hundred-dollar Expedition.
Writing off whole loads of freight is not a new thing when it comes to disasters, but it’s not so cut and dry in the trucking business. By the way, have I ever told you how to make a million dollars in the trucking business? You start with $2 million. But I digress.
In a forty-year career of bouncing around North America there have been a few bumps in the road and never catastrophic as a train wreck. But a few experiences were memorable for all the wrong reasons.
One of those bumps in the road or a sudden lane change can dislodge a pallet of beer. A pallet of beer is 1,900 cans and all of them can end up on the ground. And how do you pick them up? One at a time.
I’ve hauled brew out of Milwaukie, St. Louis, Fort Worth and Denver, but spilled it only once. If a load can move, it will. When it does, it will spill, and the remaining 47,000 beers end up in landfill.
Another load destined for the landfill was frozen chicken going to Shawano, Wisconsin. The reefer was set at minus 4 degrees, but the actual temperature was thirty degrees colder. The birds were caked in ice so hard a skid loader had to unload them.
Sometime in the early eighties I delivered a telecommunications computer the size of an icebox to a Pacific Bell substation. Too lazy to put a ramp in place, I slipped the box out a side door, where it broke free and crashed to the ground. It may explain why Bell Telephone no longer exists, but landfills are a great investment.
One of the best paying loads I had back then were California grapes going to Hunts Point in New York City. Upon arrival, they rejected two full pallets and left it up to me how to dispose of them. I located a homeless shelter in the Bronx, which readily agreed to take them all.
In a similar takedown near LAX airport, six cases of Kraft Mac & Cheese was rejected by the receiver. The Christian ministry, Focus On The Family, was located in nearby Pomona at the time. When I showed up with 600 boxes, they treated me like I was Santa Claus, even after my 50,000 pound “sleigh” left tire marks on their driveway.
Attempting to deliver a machine in Minnesota to a Minneapolis manufacturing plant, I arrived at 3:30 in the afternoon. By 4:30 p.m., we still hadn’t been assigned a loading dock, so I went into the receiving department where a group of guys were sitting around a table. When I inquired about unloading, I was told they closed at 5:00 p.m.
When I pointed to a clock on the wall that said 4:35, one of the men casually got up, stood on a chair and moved the minute hand to the top of the hour. Then, without another word, all three men rose from the table, grabbed their lunchboxes and walked out the door. Truck, trailer and load rejected till the next day. It’s funny. Now.
Roger Clark is a semi-retired over-the-road truck driver with three million miles in his logbook. He is too young for retirement, too old for a paper route and too tired to have an affair. He can be reached at [email protected].
