Thursday 7 July saw me away from Birch yard about 0530 
with a trailer with 3 drops on for the Midlands.
Could this be Ian in one of his new vans I wonder, seen on the M6 southbound round Stafford?
First drop was HBS Foods in Merry Hill area of Brum at the Washington Centre which is no more than a small Ind Est. Just two lifts up against the back doors to come off here for them.
Next drop was supposed to be Ford at Daventry but as I was shutting the trailer doors all I could see were pallets of Sharwood’s curry sauce so it doesn’t take a genius to know that they aren’t destined for a Ford plant 
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A consultation with chaos control said that the Ford stuff - which was up against the head board - needed to be tipped first as it was booked in at 1300 whereas the Sharwood’s stuff was for Asda at Magna Park for 1500. Nads 
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The pallets of curry sauce had clearly been restacked by someone and nowhere near enough shrink-wrapping had been used so I opened the curtains and criss-crossed a couple of straps round them to stop them going over.
Arrived at Ford bang on 1300 and went and booked in.
Pulled round to the unloading pad and waited to be unloaded. Luckily I managed to coax the FLT driver to shufty my Asda stuff up to the front for me, but despite my careful criss-crossing of the back two pallets, one of them had gone over through the wrapping it was that loose and the second one had just about gone too 
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I managed to secure 6 of the 7 pallets for Asda up against the head board using 2 straps on each pallet but what do you do with the 7th pallet to hold up what’s remaining? Not knowing how to secure an odd pallet like that I belled up Jim and picked his brain on it and his suggestion was to put it tight up against the nearside trailer door on its own then grab a ratchet strap and wrap it round it and the trailer, going under the curtain, which I had never thought of . My mate Keith came up with the idea that if it was ever an odd amount of pallets, allus put the single pallet in the middle before the last 2 so that if you’ve got say 3 pallets, the single one will be up against the head board (or wherever) with the other 2 next to each other behind it. Then all you have to do is tie a loose knot between 2 of your roof mounted straps to lower the cross over point and you can then secure it from going over sideways too . Learnt something new today 
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As it happened, the pallet was too far gone for the FLT driver to move it again so it was left where it was and I belled up chaos control to inform them that there was no point going to Asda as it would be refused straight away because of the poor wrapping and the collapsed pallet.
“We still need to go there so that they can physically refuse it”, says Gary. 
By the time I’d had my break it was 1615 when I got to Asda and of course I’d gone to the wrong one. This was ADC I was at which I thought would have been correct considering that the load was Ambient, hence the letter ‘A’, but no, I needed to be at IDC at the other end of Magna Park so it was more-or-less 1630 before I was at the right place. No idea what IDC stands for though 
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“You’re not booked in driver.” Well there’s a surprise eh.
Anyway he made a call to some office chick on the bell and she confirmed that I wasn’t booked in as well, but even if I had been I would have been refused because I was late. She said I should have been there at 1500 . But hang on a minute, I’m not booked in apparently, so how am I late for a booking that doesn’t exist 
. I’ll never understand how these “logistics” office muppets work.
Apparently I was booked in on the system but not booked in for the delivery and because of this I’d arrived too late for a delivery booking that doesn’t exist so they’re refusing it. I hadn’t even told them what state the load was in at this point either .
Chaos control wanted me to take it to Logistics Alliance at Castleton for around 0700 next morning. This place is bang opposite Woolies RDC.
Coming out of Magna Park towards M1 J20 :
There appears to be a secret airfield under that roundabout as there’s a plane taking off 
:
Gave Keith a bell and he was northbound on the M1 too so we decided to meet up at Long Eaton and go to 'Spoons for our tea.
Queuing up for miles to get off at J25 because of the roadworks round the doughnut. Madness :
Had an awesome meal at 'Spoons - not really a ‘meal’ as such as it was a platter to share but I had the Tex-Mex for £5.15 and Keith had the Western. There’s a pic of the Tex-Mex here. Although the onion rings were only pretend and weren’t real onion like we know it, it was excellent and really enjoyed it. The 4 mini corn-on-the-cob’s were superb as was the garlic bread. (GARLIC BREAD?? 
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. I debated risking it but decided against it in case it wouldn’t go through. The road was only a back road but seemed to be a bit of a rat-run so getting everyone to move out of the way whilst I backed up the 100 yards to the previous junction would be hard work and very unprofessional so I managed to get turned round and found an alternate way in as the place I wanted wasn’t this side of the bridge.
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