Keep On Trucking

Warehouse work usually isn’t difficult — shipping/receiving, cleaning, pulling orders, using forklifts, and so on. The work itself isn’t hard, but sometimes those truck drivers you have to deal with can be a real pain in the back.

A truck driver sees that our dock is busy. He stops on the street, gets out of his cab, and walks inside. He asks how long the current truck will be in our dock, and we let him know it will maybe be another ten or fifteen minutes. He walks back out to his truck and waits for the current truck to finish and pull out.

About fifteen minutes go by, and the current driver takes her signed paperwork for her delivered shipment, gets back in her truck, pulls out, and drives away.

For the next forty-five minutes, I find other things to keep me occupied as the guy is struggling to back his trailer into the dock. Eventually, he gives up and comes back inside.

Truck Driver: “Your driveway is too short. I can’t get my sleeper cab and this fifty-three-footer backed into your dock. I’ll have to go back to our distribution center and someone else will have to try delivering this stuff another day.”

Me: “The last driver that was here also had a sleeper cab and fifty-three-footer on it. She backed it in without a problem. One shot.”

Truck Driver: “…”

Me: “Do you want me to call the company she worked for and see if she can come back to give you lessons on backing up your trailer?”

Truck Driver: *Pauses* “I’ll keep trying.”

He went back out, and after another fifteen minutes or so, he finally got his truck backed into the dock so we could unload him.