In honor of #NationalLogisticsDay, we asked people to share their craziest stories with us. Here are some of our favorite stories:
But did you die?
Submitted by Reed Loustalot
It happened about five years ago when I was a carousel rep at a very household-name brokerage. I had a buddy of mine who was an owner-operator who had moved around regularly delivering a load to a warehouse that shall not be named. They are known for, how do I put this nicely? Uh, being horrible. You don't want to be late, they'll fine you, , they'll reschedule your delivery for, for days, maybe weeks. Nobody really likes them that much. But anyway, so he was delivering there super early in the morning, and he was on his way, and he was about 50 miles away .
Out of nowhere, he had a giant metal foot of the landing gear of the trailer fly off a trailer in front of him and go through his windshield and nearly decapitate him. And, he knew obviously he had to make it on time, or he was going to be screwed. So he kicked out his windshield and drove 50 miles with no windshield and a landing gear in his sleeper. Literally, having almost died and delivered the load on time, he ended up just sending me a picture, and I woke up, and he was like, yeah, I almost died, but I delivered this load on time for you. So, um, yeah, that's, that's my crazy story.
Gator Got Me (aka Powerlifters save the day..literally)
Submitted by Robert Bain
In March of 2016, I got invited to attend my first Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, OH. Some of my powerlifting teammates from the gym were taking part in high profile competitions there, and I got to go with our gym owner at the time to watch. I picked him up in Libertyville, IL and we headed down 94 to head to OH. On the ride, he asked me what I did for work, cause he didn't understand what logistics was (he works in education administration) While explaining some of the things we do, he asked about trucks and trucking, and we saw some blown tires on the road. I explained that some professional drivers refer to them as "gators", specifically if they run over them, they can tear up tires and hence the term "gator got me"
As I said this, a Chevy Trailblazer about 200 yards in front of us blew a rear drivers side tire. the driver skidded and lost control, swerving right then sharply left, undercutting a tractor trailer, and launching it into the air. It was what I can only describe was like a scene from a Michael Bay movie, the trailer twisted and ripped apart in the air. In front of me was a BMW x5, who got clipped by another vehicle, I swerved and missed them, then hit the divider as they braked. The tractor slammed bottom side into the divider, laying on its passenger side, pinning the SUV engine area to the driver as well.
I came to a stop and looked at my friend and said "we might be the only people that can help right now," (my thinking being we are 2 very large, strong individuals and the mechanics to extract people may not be working properly.) As I got out of the car, I could immediately smell diesel fuel. We ran to the BMW, the driver was conscious and responsive, and we raced to the tractor. I kicked in the windshield while my friend ran to the SUV. A couple other trucks stopped to assist as well, drivers bringing tools to try to unwed metal on metal. I pulled out the driver from the tractor, who was hyperventilating as I laid him down and ran back to get the other driver, who crawled from the back. As I got her away I sat the driver up and began to calm him down, cadencing his breathing to bring it back into a normal state... his wife started screaming "my babies my babies", I asked if there were children in the vehicle? she said no, they were her dogs. I ran back to the tractor and found a dog carrier, pulling them both out.
My friend yelled to me as I handed her the carrier, "Bain, I can't get him out"- the passenger of the Blazer was stuck between the dash and gearshift. I came in through the passenger side, and grabbed the gear shift; it being loose, I pulled towards me and snapped it off, and using the wedge tool that one of the truckers had brought, we freed him. He was unconscious, but breathing. We moved him to the side of the road approximately 100 yards from the truck, I ran back to my car and drove it forward to be in between him and the vehicles as we had started to smell smoke. within minutes, the cab and car were engulfed in flames, and shortly thereafter, fire and police response units arrived.
Quid Pro Uh Oh! (aka, woman bribes man for freight, man stalks woman, FBI gets involved…all to move some coil)
Submitted by Mikhail Rasner
So back in the summer of 2015, I had a coil client that quickly became my primary revenue source. After the season, the load count decreased, but I chalked it up to it just being seasonal demand. As spring approached, I reached out to the client to schedule a time to touch base. The contact reassured me that we were doing a good job and that the volumes would be coming up this summer. He even promised me a more significant cut this time. I thought nothing weird of it as I was sent quarterly bids and even awarded lanes. All was good in my mind.
Come the first week of the summer season, I had yet to hear a thing from my contact. No answer to my emails, calls, or texts. Week 2 and 3, same thing. My contact ghosted me. Last minute I had to scramble and barely made it through that summer.
As the fall of 2016 approached, I reached out. I thought maybe he got fired, but to my surprise, I called, and the same contact picked up. We carry on with the conversation as if the whole summer just didn’t happen. He ended up promising me all the lanes I had the last quarter and stated that no one was handling them. So I took the lanes, made a killing for a bit, and then boom — the same pattern continued again. Month after month, there was less and less. So throughout the spring, I bid and wait while I continue to move what is consistently less and less freight, all while telling myself to keep the faith, my contact will prevail. Mid-April comes around, and still nothing/no answers or callbacks, so I try to do what I can just to get his attention. I purposely missed pick-ups, I stopped sending updates altogether and started sending invoices with no pickup confirmation or PODs. Still Nothing from my contact.
So time went on, and I pretty much forgot all about this account. Well, until 2017, when I heard what actually happened. And It all makes sense now. I later found out from another contact there that, as it turns out, back in April to May of 2016, my contact met a young, attractive female broker and began a series of quid pro quos that quickly turned into a more “personal nature.” By the fall/winter time of 2016, she began feeling uncomfortable and started ignoring him and his requests. This was conveniently one of the times I tried calling back, and hence the whole “no one is taking care of those lanes” thing. This didn’t last long, and the patterns between the two picked back up for a bit. Eventually, the freight broker was no longer interested in partaking in their prior “arrangement”. Things escalated, and the FBI was eventually involved —they came into the shipping office and took the work computer and everything else as evidence. I still have yet to hear from him since. I guess the moral of the story here is you just never know why a prospect won’t take your calls or give you freight. You just never know.
The TONU isn't the problem
Submitted by Nick Dangles
I was managing a brokerage and one of our sales reps was moving a flatbed shipment...some piece of machinery that was supposed to weigh around 45k lbs (which will become an important detail later in the story). This rep wasn't super familiar with flatbed freight - he worked mostly with food - but he's good at his job and really detail-oriented. I'm sure he compulsively confirmed the load details with every relevant party and everything checked out. He was also working with our flatbed guys any time he had questions, so this shipment should have been fine.
It was not.
It's the day this load is picking up and the driver has been dispatched. We figure we're in the clear, but a little later in the day, I hear a commotion from this rep's corner, and then he comes over to me and says we have a problem with the flatbed load.
I'm like, well, this is freight. Why wouldn't there be a problem?
He goes on to tell me that all of the paperwork he was given by his customer and the shipper said that this machinery weighed 45k lbs. He confirmed the weight with everyone he could have confirmed the weight with, but it was a typo by his customer, and the actual weight is 45k KILOGRAMS.
If you don't know the conversion, 1 kg is about 2.2 lbs, which brings the weight of this shipment to nearly 100k lbs. Not going to work by a long shot.
So, I tell my rep that we'll have to pay the carrier a TONU because there's obviously no way he's going to pick up a 100k lb piece of machinery.
This sales rep looks at me and tells me that the TONU isn't the problem.
The PROBLEM is that the driver somehow let them put this piece of machinery on his truck, didn't notice that it weighed DOUBLE what was expected, drove about half a mile down the road and is now parked in a McDonald's parking lot.
He can't drive because his truck is obviously struggling to haul a 100k lb load......and his truck is slowly sinking into the parking lot because the pavement isn't able to handle the weight any better than his truck. Oops.
