Here is another installment of my reblog of funny stories that happened while I was a delivery driver for a lithograph company, back before my kids were born. This is a good one, so pay attention…
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One day I had a very heavy delivery to make. If you have ever picked up a big stack of magazines, you know they can be pretty heavy. We had printed up a big order of some kind of brochures on very heavy magazine paper. There were about 200 boxes full of them, and each box weighed about 80 pounds. (These are not the exact numbers. I am bad with numbers).
We stacked the boxes on four pallets, then lifted two of the pallets onto the other two with the fork lift. This is called double stacking, just so you know. We then wrapped these two towers of heavy boxes with this plastic wrap that was like industrial strength Saran Wrap. I put a lot of that plastic wrap on. I was concerned.
When I drove out of the shop, the first thing I noticed was the way the van handled. It was like I was driving in three feet of wet oatmeal, or maybe quicksand. The van was overloaded, there was no doubt about that. But I had a job to do.
On the freeway it was even worse. The van felt like it was sloshing back and forth like a trawler that was taking on water. But I managed to get all the way to the exit before it happened.
What happened, I hear you asking in my head?
You know how rich guys in expensive cars sometimes play that game where they pretend they can’t see you because you are driving a car that doesn’t cost as much as their car does? (I meet these guys a lot because I tend to drive inexpensive vehicles). I met one of them that day.
It was just as I was getting off the freeway at Sorrento Valley Road, which you may recall is the same road where I had my famous hydroplaning incident. But this time I was coming from the other direction. At this exit, the freeway is downhill, but not as downhill as the exit itself, which dips down below the freeway rather quickly. I mean this sucker is steep.
And right there at the top is where the jerk in the expensive sorry-about-the-size-of-your-penis-car cut me off. He just decided that he didn’t want to wait in line with the rest of us cheap-ass-car-driving schmucks. So he just zipped in at the last minute, you know, like they do. I had no choice but to hit the brakes to save both our lives.
Once again I am not sure if this classifies as a near-death-experience story or just a simple I-could-have-been-seriously injured story. I leave that up to you.
As soon as I hit the brakes I knew I was in trouble, because I heard a loud snap and a ripping sound. I knew exactly what it was before I even looked in the center rear view mirror and saw the piles of boxes tumbling towards me. They ripped that heavy plastic wrap like the Hulk rips his t-shirt when he gets all big and green.
I have no words to describe how scary this moment was, as I braced for the impact, although my avalanche in a tin can analogy is pretty good. Remember I was still doing about 60 miles an hour, down hill, with a retaining wall on my left and a little railing ‘protecting’ me from a drop off on the right.
The boxes hit me like a wave and crashed around me. It felt like a mule kicked the back of my seat. Four or five boxes passed between the two front seats to end up wedged against the dashboard and my right side. There were now boxes farther forward in the van than I was, like someone had just built a brick wall beside me. Boxes were leaning on me on that side. One or two boxes hit me in the back of the head before they stopped moving, and were now jammed over my shoulders, forcing my neck to bend forward. Only the driver’s seat had kept me from being crushed.
The thing is I couldn’t move. Even as I brought the van to a safe stop at the red light at the bottom of the hill, I was trying to shove the boxes resting on my head and neck off, but my arms had very little room to move, and all the boxes in back were leaned towards me, holding everything in place. I wasn’t even leaning back against the seat anymore. I was sort of pushed forward almost to the steering wheel. I couldn’t get out of the van because the box on my left shoulder had wedged me into place. And believe me, I wanted to get out, if only to express my displeasure at that other driver’s rudeness. He was stopped at the red light ahead of me, unconcerned by my predicament. Maybe, in retrospect, it is a good thing that I couldn’t get out, because at that moment I would have kicked his expensive window in, dragged him out of his expensive car, and expressed the hell out of my displeasure.
I could still move my legs. My arms could move a little below the shoulders. And I was only two blocks from where I had to deliver the boxes. So I just drove there, very slowly and carefully. I didn’t have a cell phone. I had to park outside the delivery entrance and honk the horn until some guys came out to help me. When they opened my door, the box on my left shoulder fell out, and I just sort of followed it. The guys thought my story was pretty funny. I still had mixed feelings about it at that point.
To give you an idea of how hard that avalanche hit me, when we finished unloading the van one of the guys pointed out something interesting. The whole metal floor of the van, where my seat was solidly bolted to it, was now bent. The back two bolts were now resting in little metal bumps. You could see rips in the metal where the bolts had almost torn right through the floor.
That does it for this episode… join us next time for… oh, you know the routine by now. Be seeing you.
Pouring My Art Out 
I was kind of hoping for one of the boxes to fly out your windshield and smash the expensive sorry-about-your-penis car.
I have a story like that too… guy was tailgating me for miles in the work van… then I ran over a rake on the freeway… the tire grabbed the upright rake teeth, and shot that rake, handle first, right through the front frill of the car tailgating me. He must have thought I fired a missile at him.
Ha! Great rake story. When I drove tractor-trailer I despised tail-gaters, trucks and cars alike. Here in the summer there is a lot of road construction – not possible in winter. Anyway they would often run a row of those big red plastic barrels to move traffic over or close a lane during construction. At night there were no workers, unless the repair was urgent (broken water main, etc). The red barrels stayed out all night. One trick we (my colleagues and I) used to play if we had a tailgater at night was to run straight at the barrels and then swerve aside at the last moment. Any tailgater would not be able to see the barrels coming (following too close) and would not be expecting the big swerve. They would inevitably eat the barrels. This typically caused them to cease tailgating when they had a few big plastic barrels bounce off their hood.
oh man…
Oh Art, you are so lucky to be alive – you have a guardian angel. Not being critical,but speaking from experience – there is a metal plate inside the door frame on every vehicle that will tell you the maximum weight you can load. Printed material is very heavy and double stacking printed material in a delivery van is a no-no (it is a bad idea in a tractor trailer) – not just the weight but the high center of gravity and the inability to secure the load. I used to haul mail and when the catalogs were released, we could not even load a full load single stacked let alone double in a tractor trailer.
And don’t you just love those assholes who cut you off? I used to fantasize that I could push a button and machine guns would unfold from the sides of the hood – and I would blow those M/F’s to hell. 😀
I wasn’t really given the option of opting out of taking the load…
Back in those days that was a problem. Now drivers are given the authority to say “No”and they cannot be sanctioned. To fire a driver for refusing an unsafe situation will now bring the wrath of God (and the Gov’t) down upon the company’s head. So many have been killed from dangerous loads over the years that the gov’t made special rules about it. Unsafe loads here are subject to jail time – not just for the driver but also for the immediate supervisor and the management.
This was just a regular van… and I never did find out the laws pertaining to weight and load.
Like I said, when you open the driver’s door there is a metal plate with the serial number, model number and net and gross weight riveted inside the door frame. Subtract the net from the gross and you will get the manufacturer’s allowable load weight. There is the additional consideration of how much the vehicle is registered for, and that info can be found on the ownership. You generally pay more to register heavier up to the allowed manufacturer’s allowed gross weight.
right, I guess I could have refused to drive it and been fired.
And I am pretty sure that the Government also has some laws against shooting assholes who cut you off with machine guns.
“fantasize” X “fantasize” So far as I know there are no laws against that yet and it feels oddly satisfying. ha! I don’t play violent video games or even watch much in the way of violent TV or movies (unless it is a real story like Schindler’s List). You have to allow me the occasional fantasy that makes me feel good.:D
You mentioned that you had a powerful floodlight on your truck – and I bet that a driver who just cut you off would not enjoy being in a spotlight in retaliation.
You have a good memory X. I had a pair of maneuverable spot lights like the police have, only with aircraft landing lights in them. Believe it or not, the key to safe driving is to make it as safe as possible for those around you. I don’t think I ever lost track of that. I wouldn’t ever shine a spotlight into a car without their implicit permission (like the young naked women in Mass story) for fear of hitting the rear view mirror and/or blinding the driver. I had driving lights that were also aircraft landing lights as well as fog lights, special 4-lamp high beams, and the spot lights. I never. never , never used any of these against another driver no matter how angry or upset I was. The specter of causing them to lose control because of me was just too high. I always felt accountable and if anything tended to take more responsibility for others’ safety than was real. It is not because I was a good guy – just that I was chicken shit. 😀
ha
now that actually is illegal
and that is why I want a tank
stupid government