Depends. When I did holiday work for one of the big shippers the people on board with the driver would help, but mostly the dock people left us the pile and we put it on. Its just not a very Tetris problem because really it’s a Last In First Out stack, so you are trying to get it to fit, to not fall over, and also to be roughly in the order you need to reach in and pull it out
Comment on This FedEx driver has never won a round of Tetris in his life
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Do the drivers even pack it? For some reason I thought it was a different person or team that did that. But yeah, private shipping companies are awful and I never use them except when forced. USPS forever.
HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That implies you take your vehicle home? Most places they have a depot to leave the vehicles and they fill them up at night and it’s ready to go when you walk in the office.
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I’d assume the vans are all parked in a lot; when the driver gets in, they’ll grab an available/assigned van, back it into a bay/dock, load up, and go.
The crew in the warehouse is just responsible for sorting it onto a pallet/bin or two, ready to be loaded.
I’ve never worked for a parcel courier specifically; but I’ve done a fair amount of distributed center work (warehouses that deliver product to businesses).
The drivers are often responsible for loading their own truck/trailer (not always, but more often than the other way around). Then they can see exactly what they’ve got, keeping an eye out for hazardous materials or uneven loads. It’s their responsibility to ensure a safe load after all; mainly as they’re the one that’ll have to deal with problems on the road.
‘I wasn’t the one to load the truck, I didn’t know there was a hazard’ doesn’t usually go well with emergency services or inspectors out on the road.
plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Any hazardous materials would have the paperwork that the driver has to sign before driving though.
How do you think intermodal shipping works? They repack the containers everytime it changes hands?
HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Not took home. Just parked in a separate lot on the shippers facility. We would pull up to the dock and load then go. Maybe it was more normal during the year for the loaders to do that part, but I was a holiday worker, so things might have been a little off usual operations.
Jaycifer@piefed.social 1 week ago
When I delivered Amazon packages for USPS on Sundays pickers would sort packages into bins by route then us drivers would organize packages from the bins to the truck. I think that was better than having someone else pack because then I could get a feel for where in the vehicle a specific package was, and I could better place them where I could get them (putting early packages closer to the front to grab or way at the back door if it was very large).
SolSerkonos@piefed.social 1 week ago
I’ve worked for USPS for ~8 months. It’s not just a Sundays thing. I’ve never seen someone else load for someone intentionally. A couple times someone has loaded, then gotten sick or gotten bad news and had to leave. The clerks will sort all the incoming to each route that it goes to, but once it’s in the bin for your route it’s your problem going forward.
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
USPS and UPS are both waaaay better than FedEx. Shit, even DHL is better.
mike_wooskey@lemmy.thewooskeys.com 1 week ago
Not usually. I worked as a “Package Handler” (package sorter and loader) as well as an Operations Manager at a FedEx station. The only time drivers loaded their own trucks (or even helped, or were even in the building during the loading), was when too many package handlers were out sick, or maybe during the Xmas rush.