
A High-End Mover Dishes on Truckstop Hierarchy, Rich People, and Moby Dick - hudibras
https://longreads.com/2017/09/21/a-high-end-mover-dishes-on-truckstop-hierarchy-rich-people-and-moby-dick/amp/
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jefflinwood
This 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.

~~~
rcarrigan87
Companies 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/)

~~~
rdiddly
I 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...

~~~
schoen
That's interesting! How did the items get into the chute? Is there any
possibility that someone could have used some software to simulate the packing
problem and then organize the sequence of incoming items in order to make them
more easily packable?

~~~
rdiddly
Oh that would be brilliant - as far as I know it was whatever order they came
off of the truck they were unloaded from. Basically up at the top of the
building near the roof was a conveyor belt running a rectangular or oval path
around the building. It was fed from another wing where incoming stuff was
unloaded onto it. All the chutes were connected to it, leading down to the
various truck bays where outbound trailers were parked. Barcode readers up top
would read each package's destination, and when it got to the right chute, a
mechanical arm would push it into the chute. Actually worked surprisingly
well, in retrospect (this was the mid-90s).

You'd have to get full dimensional info about each package... probably not
that hard. But to change the order, you've now got a storage problem. Where
previously your analysis was confined to just one package, now you're dealing
with groups of N packages, and depending how far you want to take the
optimization, N could be as big as "all packages destined for that truck." So
maybe you have some kind of sort area between the inbound & outbound areas. Or
maybe you use the conveyor itself as the storage - i.e. if something is out of
order, it just makes a circuit around the building until its turn comes. That
would probably require a bigger/longer conveyor, and to compensate for lower
"density" of chute-appropriate packages, it would have to move faster.

Suddenly this seems akin to the problem of optimizing spinning disc drives,
starting from slow ones in the old days and moving forward. What you're
essentially calling for is something akin to random access, but instead of
bytes we're accessing packages!

Edit: Or the hybrid version: you create multiple, smaller sorting areas
somehow, one for each bay, located near the bay.

~~~
schoen
Sounds like a pretty fun set of problems!

------
le-mark
_A 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
They 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.

~~~
it_luddite
I 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.

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Ccecil
My 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.

------
ufmace
Good 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
I’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
That'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.

------
sho
What 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!

------
sgt101
The 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.

------
MiguelVieira
Reminds 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
He mentioned that exact quote in the article...

------
johan_larson
Every 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.

------
fowkswe
Statements 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.

~~~
jdavis703
I 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
If 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.

~~~
jsolson
> 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.

It's certainly their right to drive slowly, but in Washington state it is
_not_ their right to delay others:

> Slow-moving vehicle to pull off roadway.

> On a two-lane highway where passing is unsafe because of traffic in the
> opposite direction or other conditions, a slow moving vehicle, behind which
> five or more vehicles are formed in a line, shall turn off the roadway
> wherever sufficient area for a safe turn-out exists, in order to permit the
> vehicles following to proceed. As used in this section a slow moving vehicle
> is one which is proceeding at a rate of speed less than the normal flow of
> traffic at the particular time and place.

[https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.427](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.427)

~~~
baruch
I am not living in the US and am not aware of these laws, but they do make
sense in the wording above.

In the story these comments refer to the driver had no real place to stop his
truck and I believe he was justified in going slow on a rainy/slushy road in a
heavy track on a decline.

If you are driving slowly you should be letting others pass you whenever
possible. I'm actually quite amazed that you actually need laws for that (not
that our drivers are better in any way, it is just common sense).

~~~
jsolson
Sure, sorry, I wasn't aiming to criticize the driver in the overall post -- my
comment was solely aimed at the drivers described in the quoted passage from
the prior comment :)

For most vehicles, on most roads, opportunities to allow others to pass safely
appear with reasonable regularity. Despite this law, in my experience most
slow drivers choose to entirely ignore those opportunities.

------
lifeisstillgood
This 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

------
armandososa
As a non-native english speaker I found it imposible to parse the sentence in
the title.

~~~
ams6110
"Dish" colloquialism for "talk about"

~~~
to3m
But 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
"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).

------
whipoodle
Man, that was so good. Thank you for sharing.

------
jdmulloy
"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.

~~~
jdmulloy
I'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.

~~~
jsolson
> I understand there's no way to avoid steep grades in the mountains.

Sure, but your original post assumed he took the more dangerous route. The
interstate through the tunnel is no picnic either, and I'd argue it's a tossup
whether going through there with all of the cars and other trucks is actually
safer than Loveland.

You made an assumption based on experience you don't have that was critical of
someone who does this for a living -- in fact, suggesting that the choice made
by said person should carry a penalty! _That_ is why you're seeing downvotes.

~~~
jdmulloy
I was going off of what was presented in the text. Guess I'm not allowed to
have an opinion unless I've done extensive research.

Y'all are making me feel really welcome here.

~~~
jsolson
If you want to propose punitive legal remedies for the actions of others, yes,
you should do your research.

