I've been a little busy the past few days so, I try to catch you up on all the fun.
After finally getting rid of the three mystery pallets they sent me up to Illinois, just outside of Chicago to pick up a load of frozen pizzas. The take and bake kind you find in your grocery store freezer already precooked ready to eat, that is, after you reheat them slightly.
Only they're not frozen when I get them. Nope they're still fresh from the oven and we get to cool them down in the trailer as we drive them from point a to point b.
Which means two days of listening to that reefer running on high trying to achieve -10 degrees. which it never did. Almost, but not quite.
The reefer unit has two speeds, high and low. Low speed sounds like a lawnmower at idle. Not too loud and after you get used to it, can actually lull you to sleep. It's a constant droning sound that blocks out all the other noises from all the other trucks.
On the other hand, high speed sounds more like a chainsaw and can wake the dead! I've had many a night trying to fall asleep with that thing in high speed and have found it to be quite difficult. I've tried earplugs which work well, sometimes a little too well, causing me to sleep right through my alarm the next morning. So they have to be used cautiously.
After the pizzas I picked up a load of watermelons right out of the field. It's only the second time in three years of doing this that I've picked up a load from the field. Usually the load goes from the farm to a brokered warehouse and we pick up from that warehouse but, I guess this time someone decided to cut out the middle man.
Rather interesting watching how they get the product on the trailer when there is no loading dock.
They would bring the melons in a flatbed trailer towed by your standard John Deere tractor, then offload them with two distinctly different forklift trucks.
The yellow forklift always went first. Sometimes he would pick up one box and some times two and then the green forklift would pick up one or two depending on how many the yellow one had.
I never quite figured out a pattern but, they seemed to know what they were doing, even if those observing them didn't.
I never asked them why they didn't just pick up three at a time so I can only assume that it would be too heavy for either forklift to handle.
What the photos don't show is the poor guys in the back of that trailer. Their job was to take the boxes of the tail where the forklifts would deposit them and move them into position with a hand pallet jack. I felt for them. It was 107 degrees that day! So when it was my turn in the loading position, I kicked the reefer on for the guys in the back. They were most appreciative.
---------------------------------Lunch for the crew----------------------------------
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