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The Dell Truck

Well, after three to four months of being on the sort aisle I seem to have moved up into the ranks of the experienced and well established. There are a few sorters who have been here much longer than me still, but I am just about on par with them in terms of speed and ability now.

One bit of evidence for that is my consistant assignment to the lottery ticket trucks; other pieces of eveidence came weeks and months ago when I was regularly assigned to sort the air unload and the metro unload. You have to really know your stuff well and sort quickly to do those, because you get a lot more packages that go out of state on those two.

The final piece of evidence came last night. I had to sort the Dell truck. Now, there are trucks that an unloader can unload more quickly than the Dell truck, and there are also trucks that have heavier, regular packages (Bowflex truck… Office Depot truck with its 52lb boxes of printer paper) but the Dell truck is the worst combination of all things difficult and annoying to sort.

The Dell truck is usually one of the longest trucks. It is full of a range of different size and weight packages, but typically they are between thirty-something and fifty-something pounds. So, they are heavy like the Bowflex truck and the Office Depot truck. Adding to the misery they are also easy for an unloader to unload onto you very quickly. The way in which the Dell guys load their computers into this truck makes it one of the easiest trucks to unload quickly. Light and small stuff on top with the biggest stuff on the bottom. So, most things can be taken off of this one layer of boxes that are actually on the floor. This layer is at the same level as the conveyor belt though, so an unloader can just slide most of the packages onto the conveyor belt without actually lifting the box.

So, this truck comes at you quickly and many of them are heavy. The Office Depot truck has both of those qualities too though. What sets the Dell truck apart is that the boxes are big. You get these boxes that have a desktop computer and a monitor in them and they weigh 50+ pounds, which wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but you can hardly get your arms around them. That is what makes this a big pain in the butt. You’re basically wrestling with these big packages that take extra time to manouver onto the proper belts behind you.
Oh, and it is special because it is the last truck that I hadn’t done all by myself before.

So, now I feel very accomplished as a UPS sorter. I’ve sorted every kind of truck that there is. I’ve done all of them all by myself at least once before, and I’ve managed to do them all without being blown out or having to stop the unloader or the belt.

Time to get a new job, I guess.

Posted by David under UPS |