The Keystone Kops...A Loading Story....

Swear to God, you would have had to have been there to believe this loading story.

Hubby and I went to this teensy little town in the middle of Ohio to pick up a load.  I backed our rig in and then we set back and watched the loading. 

Suffice it to say, it was pretty damn entertaining! 

First off, the guys kind of ran around like the old cartoon Keystone Cops of yore, know what I mean??  If not, I mean they were all over the place and no rhyme or reason to anything they did.  It had to be a union shop because there were too many of them for the job (more on Union shops later or in the next post).  No one seemed to be a leader, well, there was one guy with a huge, walrus mustashe (sp??) but even he seemed to just roll around, no pun intended. 

Due to deck space on my flatbed, they had to reconfigure the load to make it fit.  Alright, simple enough it would seem.  Someone had put together the load in such a way and strapped with the metal strapping that it wouldn't fit.  So, walrus-guy decides to change it around.  While he's moving the whole shebang with the forkllift, the load falls off the prongs.  Instead of stopping and picking things up, he continues shoving it down the way.  Nothing happens to the load, other than a torn box (of which I made them sign that it wasn't my fault the box was torn, oh yes, I've learned to do THAT). 

Okay, then the other 'helpers' toddle over and they pick boxes up and restrap, but again, no rhyme or reason.  Just a wad here and a wad there.  Then they put cull pieces on the tops and bottoms (cull pieces are pieces of wood or whatever that will be thrown away at the end of the journey, they aren't any good) and start loading.  Except that the load is lopsided this way and that.  Ended up, the back of the load looked like one of those Tetris games when you're almost out of room.  Yep, that's how bad it was.

Hubby and I are sitting on the sidelines watching in amazement.  What we saw were a bunch of grown men roaming around and putting things here and there and tripping over each other and redoing the load numerous times and....get what I'm saying??  Another guy who works there happened by while on his break, noticed the commotion and said, sotto voce, "Tweedledum and Tweedledees" and continued walking like he hadn't said a word. 

No kidding. 

I finally piped up and said this thing can't go 'there' and that thing needs to go 'here'.  In general, I made myslef really, really popular with them.  Hubby got up to help them with the plastic sheeting that was required and it was all he could do to keep from strangling one or all of them.  Hubby doesn't get excited about much and is a calm guy but theses clowns about caused him to lose it. 

Honestly, while sitting and watching, the whole scene looked like the Keystone Cops movie, just a bag or human-worms wiggling around and not getting anything done. 

I was going to end here but I have to tell my faithful readers, when we got to the other end of the trip (we did end up legal, which is the only way I haul anyway), the customer wanted to know whatinthehell had happened to his load.  I started to 'splain about the Keystone boys but he stopped me and said that almost every load they get out of there looks like that.  This one just happened to be particularly bad.  At any rate, the freight got there safely and in one piece, sort of, and everyone was happy.