Hi people, I’m back with another Newbie scenario in my long journey into the trials and tribulations of being a trucker!
(No DipperDave, tribulations, not tribbing! 
)
As last week, I had the misfortune to meet creatures alien to me in my 44 years on this planet! 
I was sent to pick up a HazChem pallet from another haulier, and after doing the admin in the office which included checking my ADR licence, I was given the paperwork to take down to the forklift drivers. So i went back to the truck, opened the curtain, then wandered over to the warehouse and stood for a few minutes only to then be told that i should wait by the wagon, and the forkies would come to me. Excellent I thought, a bit like a waiter service then! 
So after about 10 minutes of standing there with the curtain open, a forkie duly arrived, grunted motioned in a way which i assumed to be a request for the paperwork. So I handed it to him & off he sped without another grunt. Another 5 minutes later, out of the warehouse he speeds with a pallet of about 20 plastic buckets of flammable liquids, that looked like the resulting stack at the end of a game of Jenga. But that wasn’t that really caught my attention, it was the 2 missing blocks of the 3 on one side of the pallet, and god only knows where the baseboard for that side was… So I attempted to stop the forkie and draw his attention to the broken unsafe pallet. But the forkie completely ignored me and loaded the pallet pushing it up against a load I was yet to deliver for support, so I’m thinking to myself he already knows the pallet is knackered and using my existing load to hold it up. So now i voiced my objection a little more strenuously, and stated that I couldn’t take it on a pallet like that, and needed the ability to move the pallet around as needed for my remaining deliveries. But Mr forkie wasn’t best pleased with me being a problem “client” and made his annoyance abundantly clear in a somewhat metaphorically gesticulating act of throwing his toys from his forklift. By now I was becoming a little confused and concerned by his verbal and stroppy overreaction to my stated concerns, and to try and be helpful, I stated that I needed 2 blocks that were preferably still attached to a baseboard. But yet again the forkies reaction surprised me, as even this seemed to be to much, and he added weight to his objections saying that his company was doing mine a favour somehow in this pallet movement. So by now I was amazed, and was thinking; what was the business manager doing driving the forklift looking like he hadn’t washed himself or his clothes for months? But I have to hand it to him, as his acting was perfect and he’d nailed the loutish tone restricted to a vocabulary of no more than 2 syllables, with 50% of them being an obscenity. But back to the story, and I have to admit that I was a little dubious about this situation being a “favour” considering the admin that I’d already done, so harded my stance and said i wanted a pallet to put under the knackered, but repaired pallet. As I was now also realising that having to reset the blocks if/when I needed to move the pallet was going to be a pain. After another outbursts of tourettes and seizures from the forkie, I was somewhat gleefully informed that a pallet was going to cost me £5. By now I was getting bored of being shocked, as it occurred to me that when one logistics company hands on a consignment to another, it should be in a fit condition. So after gazing around the yards at literally hundreds, if not thousands of pallets in various states of decay, i told the forkie Neanderthal that I better phone my office.
After relying the situation, I was told I’d be called back, and less than 10 mins later the phone rings and I’m asked if i have a fiver! My office contact was laughing as he asked, and sounded to me a little frustrated by the need to pay £5 for a pallet, or maybe this is standard procedure, I don’t really know. But one thing is for sure was that I wouldn’t be handing £5 to the forkie, and was relieved to me told that I needed to do this in the office and get a proper official receipt for the company records. So off I trotted, and once i’d spent 10 tediously boring minutes standing at the desk, one of the admin staff reluctantly came over to deal with me! And almost instantaneously the task of dealing with this was passed from admin person, to admin person. Yet it was all in slow motion, almost like a scene from The Matrix! By now I knew that forkie Neanderthal was going to drag his heels as well as his knuckles, and asked the last in the chain of admin staff, who’s going to deal with this. As by now a couple of unwashed vagrants were also inhabiting the office area, so I made the requisition on the assumption that these were more company forkies. And I was proved correct in my assumption, as Neanderthal number 2 was appointed to the task. This filled me with hope of progress, as this specimen appeared more lucid, and maybe looking like a tramp was just a hobby to him. So as we were in segregated areas, I trundled back off the the truck to wait for the second primate that had possibly washed this month, to arrive. Within minutes he’s whizzing around the warehouse and proceeds to load a couple of trucks. Obviously the penny had dropped that this Einstein is a splenetic copy of Neanderthal 1, and attempting to wind me up by being spiteful, and waste my time. 
So I gave it a while longer just to confirm my suspicious, and then rang the office to make them aware of the game being played. Plus I thought it was probably a good idea to let them know about this problem/game, and give some justification if I came back later with undelivered loads. Anyway, I’m told by my office that they will call the other management office, and then get back to me. So I waited another 15-20 minutes and wandered over to the management office, and for once things seem to go at normal speed! A office bod put on a Hi-Viz and made there way over asking on the way “Haven’t you been loaded yet?” And it was almost as if he knew the answer before asking! And surprise surprise, as the office bod and I get near the truck, forkie rolls up with lets say, a well seasoned pallet, which most would call ■■■■■■■ But it was in one piece and therefore technically a pallet, so i just got on with it and didn’t give forkie Einstein the benefit of any acknowledgement with regard to his selection.
And the reason I’m calling him forkie Einstein, is because he’s probably too dim to work out that I’m paid by the hour! Yet I was fully aware that I was sat on my arse earning while doing nothing, plus also taking up space in their yard, making their own drivers lives more difficult… Also at the same time, I was aware that I needed to show due diligence, and keep my company informed of what was occurring. So I wasn’t going to let primate Einstein wind me up, and polity asked that we put the broken pallet on top of the antique pallet, and hope the woodworm holds. Forkie seems to understand and gestures in a way which could be perceived as a twitch, if it wasn’t for the coinciding timing of these, and proceeds to take the Jenga stack off my wagon and goes to put it on the Tate Modern distressed masterpiece of a pallet, and I’m thinking what about the 2 missing blocks to support that corner and side? But no, forkie had other ideas and choose some very choice words when I stated that the purpose of putting Pallet A on Pallet B, was to make the load more pallet truck friendly, and in such, I needed the 2 missing blocks of Pallet A as well. After I’d been told to ■■■■■■■■ go away forkie Einstein, he sped off to the pile of dying pallets that Pallet B was soon destined to reside, and probably only did so because office bod was stood there. Upon Einsteins return, he places the blocks, picks up the bottom pallet and we are loaded! And I even got to specify where i wanted it this time!
I proceeded to attempt to secure my messy stack of plastic 20l tubs that are stacking in a completely non-uniform arrangement, and relied on plastic banding with a thin shrinkwrap to keep it together. But what worried me was the softness and pliability of the tubs, so attempting to band a load like that, I’d expect the banding not to stay tight as the load could deform. and thought the thin shrinkwrap was probably doing more to hold it all together than the banding… And as this ADR load was now balanced on 2 pallets, I didn’t want to take any chances. So to secure the load I attempted to use the what I perceive to be, the next to useless and weaker duplication of the curtain straps, which in my truck is a central high level tube with straps hanging down and attaching, normally in exactly the same spots as the curtain straps! 
So I used 3 of these internal straps around the load, securing either side and over the top of the load. And then I used a normal ratchet strap to do 2 loops around the base level of tubs encompassing the internal straps as well, in an attempt to lock the load to that side of the truck in 2 corners. So maybe these internal straps can be useful!
By now I’d spent/wasted so much time at this transport company, I didn’t get to complete all of my remaining deliveries, and the ones I did didn’t require me moving this load anyway! So when I rolled back into the depot at the end of the day to be off loaded, the transport manager was on the forks along with a couple of other forkies, as we were obviously short of forkies and had lots of trucks to offload. And when i pulled the curtain back to reveal my masterpiece of strapping on the Jenga stack, the transport manager burst out laughing, and I’m not entirely certain why! 
Maybe he was laughing at the load stacked on 2 pallets, or maybe because I’d strapped the crap out of it! I later found out that he’d heard about my fun and games at the other logistics company, but as I doubted he knew the full story, I’m still not certain he wasn’t laughing at my over engineering! But as a Newbie, I’d rather be safe than sorry, and didn’t/don’t even know that paying £5 for a knackered pallet, was normal procedure or not… However when I presented him with the receipt for said pallet, he did seem to indicate to me that this wasn’t normal procedure, and the other logistics company were being a bunch of dicks!!! And I think he might of swore as well! 
So the reason for my story is really to guage what others would have done, and did I do the right thing in standing my ground and not taking what in my opinion was un unsafe load, that DVSA would have loved to see and dish out a fine over.
Thanks for reading people, and you can WAKE UP NOW!!! 
P.S. These are the only forkies I’ve had an issue with so far, as all the others I’ve dealt with have been absolutely fine. Yes some are grumpy, some are happy and some are devoid of any personality. But they have all got on with the job, and done what they are paid to do. So I’m struggling to understand how or why this transport company allows its forkies to behave in such a manner, be so abuse to people & clearly waste the companies time and money? And when i told another “old hand” driver at my firm about the experience, I didn’t even have to say what company this happened at, he knew instantly! And for that reason I’m choosing not to name them, as I’d like to know if this company in the central southern area of Hampshire are notorious■■?
So I have to admit that I was a bit shell shocked, bewildered, and angry all at the same time, but I wasn’t going to show him I was getting my ■■■■■■■ in a bunch! 
Who knew they would come in so handy now for my bedroom ■■■ antics!