Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Shopping Cart Nightmare

I am learning how to do different things with the blog. 
 Below is my first attempt at embedding a video.
Somehow, I'm not able to center the clip, but I think it will do for now.
  
This quick clip is truly a truck driver nightmare.  
You can bet that I will always double check that the shipper has secured the load before pulling from the dock to close my doors.

That might seem simplistic, but actually, its not.
Often, we back into a dock that has a red/green light visible to the driver in their side mirror.
After the driver backs in and sets the trailer brakes, a mechanical "grabber" reaches out from the dock and basically secures the trailer to the loading dock so that a "brow" can be deployed to bridge the gap between trailer and dock.  At this point, the light will turn RED indicating that the driver cannot move the truck/trailer away from the dock.  The "brow" enables the forklifts to whiz in and out of the trailer either loading or unloading.  
As you can see by the black outline around the opening there at the dock in the video, the trailer has backed up INTO a sleeve that seals the trailer to the loading dock.  
In other words, the driver can't actually see into the dock to either make sure that the load has been secured or communicate with the dock hands.
Ideally, when the loading is finished and the load has been secured, the  "brow" will be  lifted and the light will turn GREEN.  Upon seeing a green light, the driver pulls away from the dock and adjacent trailers to be able to close and lock the doors of the trailer.



I laughed until I cried last night when I saw this.

We are Palm Springs, CA hanging out waiting to pick up a load in Blythe, CA and head out with it to Charlotte, NC.  The timing is REALLY loose on this particular run, so we are going to do some exploring along the way.
There is a hot springs in Tonapah, AZ and I would love to figure out how to visit the Aquarium in Atlanta.  We  might even get to check out some real estate in the Smokies of North Carolina as well.

I'll take pictures!

1 comment:

JT said...

A good forum for info on that part of the world, the deserts out there, is Panamint Charlie's site:
http://www.panamintvalley.com/forum/