Collected a load early last week from a place that makes smoke “grenade” aerosol things for airsoft/paintball use etc and while I was being loaded there was a guy just outside the gates obviously tightening his straps, all of a sudden he starts running around swearing.
He’d obviously tightened it too much over the top of a box and crushed one of the cans, setting it off, filling the back of his curtainsider with bright orange smoke.
He ran back inside the warehouse with this fizzing, smoking, mess of a box and got them to deal with it and, very kindly, give him a box.
Thought it might have been more funny if it had happened in transit, has anyone got any funny/good stories of loads “Gone wrong” ?
When I was with my granddad a couple years ago we had beer kegs on the back of the trailer, and the forklift driver was unloading them, the forklift driver was new to the job and he got cocky he lifted the barrels and he caught the plug on one of the kegs with his fork and all that was heard was a bang and 3/4 keg of beer was pouring out and the driver paniced knocking all the barrels and next thing before we knew it 50 odd barrels came flying off the trailer. Certainly wasn’t a nice experience!!! Nice smell though!!
Many years ago when I was a lad in my dads yard, they were unloading some of those self inflating rafts you get on cruise ships and vessels of that size. They weren’t on pallets and were loose, so the driver in the back of the trailer was rolling them onto the forklift, then the forkie was rolling them off inside the warehouse… Next thing all I heard was this popping/rush of air sound. As the forklift driver was rolling the rafts off the forks one of the inflating cords caught the top of the forks and lo and behold an 18 man raft starts appearing flapping about as it inflates. Funny to watch at the time, sadly though the cost was quite a bit to get the company to come and let it down and bring new gas etc.
A few years ago I went and had a really hot curry and the next day I had to run up to Manchester from Hatfield. Well that load nearly went wrong I can tell you! I was walking like I had a terrible back injury trying to get to the bog in the services!!
I made it though with no ‘accident’!
I used to deliver freight into Manchester airport and occaisonally took coffins with dead Pakistanis into Servisair.
One Friday I had the coffin on top of a pallet of cardboard kegs of dye and when forky (in a rush) grabbed the pallet and shot backwards the coffin leaped off and crashed to the floor.
Only being made of chipboard (or similar) the coffin smashed open and said dead body attempted to escape.
It was then pushed back into the coffin and loaded to the Heathrow trunker and despatched
.
I picked it up again on Monday when it was returned
On my second ever agency shift on class 2 I was given a 26t Scania to do milk deliveries to Tesco Express around south London. I was parked outside one shop about 11pm on a Saturday night trying to manouevre dollies past all the empties that everyone kept giving me one of the dollies rolled into the one on the taillift and tipped it headlong over the safety stops. I didn’t cry over the spilt milk but certainly felt like it when a bus went by.
It was a very low point for me, I felt like getting on the bus and leaving the lorry, milk and dollies there for someone else.
del949:
I used to deliver freight into Manchester airport and occaisonally took coffins with dead Pakistanis into Servisair.
One Friday I had the coffin on top of a pallet of cardboard kegs of dye and when forky (in a rush) grabbed the pallet and shot backwards the coffin leaped off and crashed to the floor.
Only being made of chipboard (or similar) the coffin smashed open and said dead body attempted to escape.
It was then pushed back into the coffin and loaded to the Heathrow trunker and despatched
.
I picked it up again on Monday when it was returned
streaky:
A few years ago I went and had a really hot curry and the next day I had to run up to Manchester from Hatfield. Well that load nearly went wrong I can tell you! I was walking like I had a terrible back injury trying to get to the bog in the services!!
I made it though with no ‘accident’!
I think most of us have had those kind of ‘near-brown-trousered’ experiences at one time or another. I certainlty have and ust to make it worse I suffer periodically with irritable bowel syndrome, and at those times there’s no denying Mr Brown
When I drove on night trunk for Swifts in Duston they had a contract with Plasmo extrusions who made PVC for double glazing makers, the stuff was unstable and loaded only 6 feet high on flatbeds due to movement etc. One night I arrived at work and was told my load for Maidstone was already loaded, roped and sheeted. As I never trusted anyone with the exception of a couple of really good guys to secure my load I went and checked it and found it was plasmo and loaded 12 feet above the deck to make the load 15ft 6 inches high
I went in the office and registered my concerns but was told the load had not only been carefully roped and sheeted by experts but also had high tension straps below the sheets and they wanted to know if it was possible to load that high as it was very light stuff, I asked for 10 extra high tension straps to put outside the sheets for extra safety and was given them. I drove down the M1, M25, over the Dartford bridge, down the M20 and to the industrial estate, as I turned into the depot the entire loadslid off the side covering the yard and blocking everything. I got a kinfe and walked down one side cutting all the straps and rope so the load fel completely off, took photos of the pallets they had placed on top containing metal fittings which gradually worked on the lower part of the load to cause the collapse, dropped the trailer, collected an empty and left them to it.
Next night I was summoned to the managers office for a carpeting but armed with polariods and the shop steward it was in fact the manager who got the carpeting.
They never did it again.
a few years ago, i had to deliver 3 pallets of paving slabs to a contractor working at his customers house, i reversed up a tricky drive wayinto a cobblestone courtyard, he asked me if i could put them near the gate to the back garden area, told him i would get as close as i could but my pallet truck wont work on the cobblestones, especially as the pallets were well over a ton each, he found some scaffold boards and ply sheets and fashioned an unloading area, first two pallets came off smoothly, got to the last and biggest, and as i gave it a little shove to get from the bed of the lorry onto the tailift the weight caused the taillift to bend slightly, add to that momentum, and it bent a little more, gathering more momentum the thing just took off and crashed onto the deck! luckily the fella’s waiting were standing around the side of the lift, had they been infront, it would have taken more than a couple of nurofen to sort that out! asked him to sign, print, date and time as i’d got another job to do and i was running late.
I delivered some crates of roof tiles to a site out in the countryside behind Hams Hall. The crates weighed a good 1200kg each and there was no way I could even push them on a pallet truck to the tail lift. Worse still the truck had old fashioned cart springs so I couldn’t even lower the suspension.
After a bit of manouvering I got it fairly level and with three of us in the truck pulling and pushing we got the first one down to the back. Of course the weight compressed the springs and it rolled out of the back and there was no way we could stop it from crashing off the end of the tail lift. The two guys who were standing there broke some kind of record for running backwards.
I managed to extract my pallet truck and took the other crates straight back to the yard.
not myself but my grandad when he was driving was spreading slurry from a tanker onto farmers fields and they used to fit something to the back on the tank knock on the pto and take off in 1st gear at idel and once moving would jump out and open the tap a little to allow the slurry to spray behind them,then quickly jump back in the cab and go off down the field…only 1 time another driver missed the cab step and fell over luckily not under the wheels but he didnt get up in time for the back of the lorry to go past and got covered in smelly slurry…
and the time when sprerading cows blood from local abutoir on a field someone got covered in cows blood while at a roadside cafe…someone didnt beleive driver had blood on board so they opened the tap(with consent from driver) but unfotuently a bone got stuck or something simlar under the tap(back in the 70s this is btw when they used gate valve) and they couldnt turn the tap off left blood all over the road…
one of the dollies rolled into the one on the taillift and tipped it headlong over the safety stops. I didn’t cry over the spilt milk but certainly felt like it when a bus went by.
