Stupidity part 1
Tip bananas in Piraeus market, phone in, told to get boat back to Bari/Brindisi, 2days later arive in Bari, head for Foggia I’m told, get a load of Brocoli, nothing doing so head north, phoned in at Rimini, told to keep going to Imola, still nothing so headed to Modena, again nothing, told to go to Cuneo, theres some Kiwi there, oh no there wasn’t! go into France, dont mess around just head for Avignon MIN was the next instruction, surprise surprise, nothing doing, next stop Perpignan, guess what? yes that’s right nothing! Eventually ended up in San Javier, Murcia & loaded Lettuce, IIRC it was something like 3500kms & involved 2 weekends one on the boat & in Bari, the 2nd in Perpignan, fresh air from Greece to Spain, good job I was on wages & not trip money!
Part 2
Also used to take 1, maybe 2 small pallets of computer parts from UPS at Barking to UPS in Basle, it was a daily service, all in a 13.6m tilt, did that every week for about 6 months.
Part 3
Load empty 2ltr bottles at Coca Cola Sidcup for East Kilbride, we had no hi cube trailers so they paid for 2 lorries at a special rate, arrived at Coca Cola East Kilbride & they tipped the bottles straight in a roll on roll off bin, they were the wrong way up on the pallets, the machines that filled the bottles were different, ooops!
A couple of years ago i had just tipped in Sevilla and was told to go and load in Manilva down on the coast. The load was the entire contents (including a couple of kitchen sinks) of a very rundown hotel. The bulk of the load was a couple of hundred of badly stained (■■■■■■■ mattresses. This pile of crap had to go to another crappy hotel near Perugia in Italy. The whole lot wouldnt have fetched 100 euros at a car boot sale!
Tipped dartford reload Cwmbran.
Saw one of our drivers coming the other way. Gave him a shout on the cb.
“Where you loading?” i said
“Tilbury” He said
He tipped at Bristol 20 minutes from Cwmbran.
I know this is gonna sound ridiculous, but I once loaded loose monkey-nuts on flatbed and took them to Holland. Had to aquire some scaff-boards to build sides, then shovelled the nuts in as high as possible before putting a sheet over the top.
3 of us in full length drawbars, tipped in paris then off to naples empty.
met 4 more empty drawbars at bourg heading south to load in italy as well.
the gendarmerie at cluses weren’t happy because we had no cmr’s and we had told them we were all carrying glider engines, it took us bloody ages and a few coffees/beers to explain the joke
same firm as rikki
I got one few years back when doing agency…called into ibbstock bricks with ref number and i was told on phone 1 pallet of bricks to go back to yard.
Turns up, hands paperwork to forklift driver and opens the curtain on 18t rigid.
5mins later forklift driver comes back laughing, i ask him whats up he kindly hands me 1 brick wrapped in carboard box and says thats my load.
Didnt go down well with office but still went back to yard for arctic tramper driver to take down road and deliver lol
whooshwhoosh:
been empty to bellshill from warrington…to find no loads available…rtn empty!
spoke to a tdg driver today,whos on a contract collectin the red (lpn)?pallets,yesterday he went 2hrs to wales to collect a single emty pallet,and that was a planned trip!..fuel economy…my arse!
This happens regularly at TDG who i work for; Last month a colleague of mine drove all the way from Avonmouth to Carnforth with an empty trailer to off hire it ,then returned all the way back to Avonmouth with another empty trailer !
We regularly drive from Avonmouth to Baglan or Bridgend to collect loads that have been neither picked or loaded or have been taken earlier by another driver so we have to return empty to Avonmouth.
Another regular waste of time/effort/fuel is the ferrying of broken pallets from Avonmouth to either Carnforth or Northfleet and again returning empty!
The daftest thing of all though is that a chap drives all the way from Carnforth to Avonmouth to teach us drivers fuel efficient driving !!! I think our traffic office should be taught fuel efficient planning !!!
Daft load?! has anyone ever hauled beef skins? Then for sure you’ll remember the stink for rest of your life…
Otherwise, two FTLs of small metal parts from one factory in Piestany, SK to another factory in Piestany, SK - 800 meters away. Because none of the two had forklift that could lift the crates they packed the parts into (they were about 1.5t each), they had to hire it from somewhere else. So loaded 20 of those crates, moved those 800 metres, waited half an hour for the forklift to arrive, unloaded, moved empty back, waited for the forklift, loaded, moved, waited, unloaded… All day work, drove 1.6km laden, 10km empty, paid for laden kms of course…
HomoFaber:
Daft load?! has anyone ever hauled beef skins?
YES!!! Went to a place in midlands somewhere, it was a container full of these skins!!
Found this place, got out of cab to go and ask and… OMG! what a {zb} hole. The smell was rank to say the least, and the dog looked nasty too.
I spoke to the bloke standing on the pavement, i said…i’ll open back doors out here mate, back on bay you help yaself, i aint walking through that blood and {zb}
I sat in cab with aircon on smokin funny ■■■■ to get shot of the smell…worse job ever. Thx for the reminder Homo!
I’ve done the skins on a flatbed. I had to fold the sheets then lift them onto the trailer. Not nice. The smell wasn’t as bad as when i did them with a tautliner in the summer though. Never again.
I ordered some decking off ebay about 2-3 weeks ago. Delivery was meant to be 14 days so the wife rung the bloke on Tuesday and he said it will be with you on Thursday; it’s getting picked up tomorrow.
Yesterday afternoon got a phone call from the agency, could you do an evening run up to the Birmingham hub for nightfreight. Sat on a bay watching them in the mirrors load me and there was loads of long items going on. Get back to Southampton and as I have my C+E course starting again at 1100 and it was now 0530 thought sod it I aint hanging about I’m off home.
Go to my C+E course today come home and the wife announces the decking is here. Look at the bag and guess who delivered my decking? You got it nightfreight!
Do you think I could claim some of my delivery costs back off the bloke as I basically carried it the furthest?
limeyphil:
I’ve done the skins on a flatbed. I had to fold the sheets then lift them onto the trailer. Not nice. The smell wasn’t as bad as when i did them with a tautliner in the summer though. Never again.
I had the same, took full load of skins to Italy for the leather suite and jacket industry.
Parked on services for the weekend near Verona in June or July,
woke up late on sunday to find a portugese truck next to me.
The 2 drivers were cooking up their breakfast / lunch with blood and fat dripping from my trailer about 18" behind them.
I did apologize but they just shrugged their shoulders and carriedon
No me but a friend, a box of sausages from Valencia to Malaga well they did get there they were cooked on BBQ.
Also a potato peeler the driver was expected to drive empty from Benidorm to Malaga when his back load was in greece. Boss got 3 post cards from that potato peeler 1 from france 1 from italy and 1 from greece.
I’m sure i’ve done some crazy loads at times, but i do know a man who collected his 44t outfit and did 5hrs driving and had an hours kip waiting to tip and then opened his curtains on his EMPTY! trailer. A week later a colleague of his was doing the same run, he was an hour away from tip when he decided to check on his load of fresh air! I know of another instance of this, makes you wonder if this kind of thing happens a lot but nobody admits to it. I always open doors and check that the trailer has in it what it should have, i don’t like surprises.
Ran double manned empty to udine Italy load 1 box Cl1 haz on a euro Threw it in the trailer, followed to Ventimiglia (security) and drove to N Dorset where it went in a van to Knottingly.
The whole lot would have fitted in my car
spet it right now 
