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A High-End Mover Dishes on Truckstop Hierarchy, Rich People, and Moby Dick
- le-mark 9y agoA lot of criticism about movers has to do with how claims are handled. Moving companies require considerable documentation before paying a claim. Do you know why? It’s because so many people file bogus claims. Many people don't know, but the (US) military pays for professional movers of this caliber. I used to know a guy who would ship 10 busted tv's (cathode ray tube) and put in claims for all of them every time he changed duty stations. It was an easy $2000 check each time. Apparently the movers can't turn on electronics before or after a move due to the potential for condensation to damage the electronics. This was a while ago, so I don't know if this is actually true or not.
- bbarn 9y agoThey may now, but they didn't always. I grew up military, moving every 3-4 years, and it was always a fear filled game of anticipation when we finally got our stuff - sometimes weeks later. We had movers completely destroy some of our stuff, "lose" expensive electronics, the exact opposite of what this guy is talking about re: professionalism and claims.
- ashark 9y agoMy wife's stories about moves as an 80s/90s/early-2000s army brat are mostly ones of everything getting broken and, over the course of 10 or so moves, almost anything resembling a keepsake or memento (or even just a favorite toy) eventually being in one of the several boxes per move that the movers straight-up lost. Sad stuff. 'Course, her dad was enlisted, so that may have made a difference. About as high-ranked as he could be toward the end, though, and AFAIK their moves were still awful.
- it_luddite 9y agoI remember my older brother being moved by professionals when he was in the Navy. They came in and packed everything up including the waste basket by a desk... with all the paper trash in it. There was one thing damaged, which they told him about. His motorcycle fell over during the move and had a slight dent in the fuel tank. He looked at it and told them not to worry about it since he had a larger one on the other side. He was really impressed with their services and if I ever use professional movers, I'd want folks like that.
- birdman3131 9y agoMy dad was in the army back in the 80's and was investing in wine at one point. One case that he had he recalls would be worth $25k-$30k these days. It vanished on a move one time and he assumes it just got drunk.
- sho 9y agoWhat a great read. Insta-buy. I'm always fascinated to hear such detailed, even loving, stories from other people's lives and careers - and this one is so well written and obviously passionate that I can't wait to hear more. Thanks!
- MiguelVieira 9y agoReminds me of John McPhee's "A Fleet of One" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/02/17/a-fleet-of-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/02/17/a-fleet-of-one
- cyberpunk0 9y agoHe mentioned that exact quote in the article...
- schoen 9y agoThat was also collected in a McPhee book called Uncommon Carriers, about people who work in transportation.
- fowkswe 9y agoStatements like this make me cringe: > I’ve cost them time and money going down the hill. It’s a macho thing. Drive the hills as fast as you can and be damn sure to humiliate any sonofabitch who’s got brains enough to respect the mountains. It's unfortunate that trucking is one of the last middle class industries left in the US. We need jobs like this, but at the same time I can't wait for automation to take the human factor out of this equation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jdavis703 9y agoI hate drivers who go slow down mountains, especially in cars. They need to use the turn outs and let better skilled drivers pass them. It has nothing to do with gender or machismo, if you can't handle your vehicle at a reasonable speed you have no business on the road blocking other people.
- baruch 9y agoIf someone feels safer driving slowly they are completely in their right to do so even if it is a detriment to others. They should if at all possible let others pass them and definitely not prevent such passings but it is not always possible for them to do so, and they may not know the road as well as you do to know in advance about some stop they could take to release the pressure. I'm not usually one of the slow drivers and I do get annoyed at the slow drivers when I can't pass them but I will still keep my distance and avoid trolling them with horns, lights or otherwise. The road is for everyone and some will be slower than me and some will be faster.
- jefflinwood 9y agoThis article is an excerpt from the book, which I thought was a great read - very well paced. There's more money in corporate relocations and military moves than I would have expected. My big takeaway from it wasn't anything to do with trucking (the author is a professional house mover) - it was about the accumulation of stuff and how the mover took down all of this heavy furniture for customers from the northern states to Florida, only to find that they didn't really want their old stuff down there anyway.
- j_s 9y agohttps://amzn.com/dp/B01M2XRQ50/ https://amzn.com/dp/B01M2XRQ50/ $9.32
- reneherse 9y agoYou can find a local bookstore at which to buy it here: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393608717 https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393608717
- rcarrigan87 9y agoCompanies are paying less and less for big expensive corporate moves. Many household good drivers don't actually make that much money when it's all said and done (and it's very hard work). I do like his descriptions of the art of packing a trailer. It really is a thing of beauty [0]. [0]https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/moving-cross-country-cost/ https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/moving-cross-country-cost/
- kbenson 9y agoWow, that packed truck section is a thing of beauty. Like real life Tetris.
- rdiddly 9y agoI used to load trailers for RPS, which became FedEx Ground. Described it to people the same way, too - "like real-life Tetris." Only it was even more like Tetris because of the time pressure and randomness. If you waited too long trying to build the perfect tier your chute might fill up, triggering a sensor that stops the whole line, and earns you derision from the other handlers and a visit from the manager to see what's wrong. And we didn't have an idea of the complete contents in our heads ahead of time either; we just had to deal with whatever came down the chute one piece at a time. (Though you might be able to store 5-6 pieces off to the side, but that gets clumsy fast.) One strategy to try to accommodate that randomness would be to have a lower row for one size-range, progressing horizontally, then another row on top of that in the same tier, for some other size-range. Going even further you could even start a second tier in front of that, with two more sizes. But that also could screw you if the one in front (or on top) starts to get too far ahead of the one behind (or on the bottom). Then you're back to setting packages aside and tripping on shit...
- whipoodle 9y agoMan, that was so good. Thank you for sharing.
- jdmulloy 9y ago"Loveland Pass, Colorado, on US Route 6 summits at 11,991 feet. That’s where I’m headed, having decided to skip the congestion at the Eisenhower Tunnel. Going up a steep grade is never as bad as going down, though negotiating thirty-five tons of tractor-trailer around the hairpin turns is a bit of a challenge." This sounds to me like he took a more dangerous route to avoid traffic. There should probably be a fine or some other deterrent for taking a dangerous route if you don't absolutely have to. He risked the lives of not only himself, but anyone else on that road.
- jasondclinton 9y agoOn the way to Aspen from Denver, it's a perfectly valid route to take during warm months and isn't particularly more dangerous than any other route to Aspen for a tractor trailer. Often, when there's a bad crash on I-70, that's really the only way to traverse the Colorado.
- niftich 9y agoAs a sidenote, hazmats are banned from the tunnel if Loveland is open [1]. If Loveland is closed, hazmats are held back at the tunnel [1][2] until they can fully stop normal traffic, at which point they escort hazmats through such that they don't intermix with regular traffic in the tunnel. [1] https://www.codot.gov/travel/eisenhower-tunnel/eisenhower-metering.html https://www.codot.gov/travel/eisenhower-tunnel/eisenhower-me... [2] http://www.landlinemag.com/story.aspx?storyid=61225 http://www.landlinemag.com/story.aspx?storyid=61225
- jdmulloy 9y agoI'll admit I've never been to Colorado, but I understand there's no way to avoid steep grades in the mountains. Thanks for the downvotes.
- steev 9y agoThere is no way to avoid steep grades, but the pass he took is much more difficult to drive than taking the Eisenhower tunnel due to sharp turns. It can be stressful in a car, I can't imagine doing that in a semi.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- armandososa 9y agoAs a non-native english speaker I found it imposible to parse the sentence in the title.
- ams6110 9y ago"Dish" colloquialism for "talk about"
- lisper 9y agoParticularly with the implication that what is being talked about is juicy insider gossip.
- schoen 9y agoAlso truckstop hierarchy = social hierarchy in places where truckers exit the road to rest and receive services; and Moby Dick = an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. But "dish" is probably the trickiest thing here.
- to3m 9y agoBut typically you specifically "dish the dirt". "Dish" on its own is not a valid verb, at least not in the version of English I speak. I don't know why. (Interestingly, OS X's Dictionary app says that a Britishism is to use "dish" as a verb meaning "destroy or defeat". Don't recall ever hearing this, though...)
- mturmon 9y ago"Dish" as a verb indicating gossip is informal, but according to Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dish https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dish + scroll down), it can be both a transitive and intransitive verb (i.e., used with an object, or not).
- lifeisstillgood 9y agoThis was a well written and interesting piece - you could see professionalism shining through, even through his fear of the things he could not control. Very good
- johan_larson 9y agoEvery time I have to move I start fantasizing about living with very, very little stuff. The question is, how little? I happily lived with a couple of suitcases of stuff in college, but that didn't include any furniture or kitchen gear.
- ufmace 9y agoGood story. I worked in moving as well Once Upon A Time. We didn't do the super-high-end work or long-distance driving that this guy did, but the packing stories are about the same. There is a lot of skill to packing a moving truck well and quickly. It may not seem like it at the time, but we occasionally got these cross-load jobs where you could really tell. That's when a U-Haul that a customer packed broke down, and U-Haul would get them a new truck and pay for movers to move their stuff to the new truck. Almost all of them are pretty loosely packed by our standards, and can be transferred in an hour or two. We did get one where the customers had spent ~3 days packing everything into their truck. It was pretty chaotic, but the had sure enough filled every nook and cranny. I was kinda proud that we got everything except 3 medium-sized pieces into the new truck in about 5 hours. The full-pack jobs are usually only done by either the elderly, or people who have someone else paying for their move. It gets expensive, what with paying for people's time to pack things, and paying for new, high-quality packing materials. It's mostly easy work, though, and you at least don't have to deal with boxes that are falling apart, badly taped, badly packed, not enough stuff inside and so crush with anything on top of them, too much stuff and impossible to lift or hold together, 50 slightly different sizes that don't pack together well because they got them secondhand from all over the city, etc. And dishes and other fragile items actually get packed properly and don't get smashed up if you look at the box funny.
- js2 9y agoI’ve moved cross-country twice and was fortunate enough to have both moves paid for, including packing. Professional packers are amazing. The first time was two guys to pack a 1,200 sq ft apartment, the second time three guys to pack a 1,500 sq ft home. Both times they were done in less than a half day. The only “unfortunate” part is you end up moving crap you probably should’ve sold or tossed. Having to pack and/or move your own stuff is a great motivator to prune.
- ufmace 9y agoThat's the trade-off all right. A lot of the extra time that you spend packing your own stuff is looking at every single thing and deciding whether you really want to move it, or sell it or trash it instead. It's a lot faster to just pack everything without having to think about that. Having all of the boxes of the right types and all of the packing paper that you need at hand helps too. But then, yeah, you do end up with a lot of stuff you don't need if you aren't forced to prune like this ever so often.
- sgt101 9y agoThe 3hrs sleep story at the end - all the chat about not wanting to wipe people out, but the machismo still leaks and exposes us all to a red eyed twitch monster herding forty mega joules.
- Ccecil 9y agoMy father was a long haul furniture mover for 35 years. This article was spot on from stories I have heard...as well as what I saw riding along with him and working for a month. Freight haulers tend to disrespect the furniture movers quite often and the furniture movers tend to view the freight haulers as lazy since they don't load their own trucks. It is a difficult business...very physically demanding. What finally ended my father's driving career was 3 back surgeries in a 10 year span. They finally had to tell him that not only could he not load his own truck anymore (he still did after the first 2) but that he could no longer sit for long periods of time just to drive. He amassed over 1M safe driving miles at the end. After that he went on to drive school buses so at least his skills were still put to use.