Something I am very angry about driving a truck here is ‘Lumper fees’. I don’t know if Cliff or the others come across them way down there but to me they are extortion. I had never encountered them anywhere else in Europe or Britain.
I have had many an arguement sometimes refusing to pay and driving away only to be recalled and having the recieving guy unloading the goods free of charge, which only shows that they need the stuff and will take it regardless of you paying or not.
At 3.00am this morning i was at C & S grocery in Buffalo NY, I felt sick with a headache and no mood to argue yet again, I had a 52ft trailer with 56 3ft high pallets doubled up, none of them needed breaking down so no manual labour was required, I was charged $100.00 for a fork lift driver to remove them from my trailer, it took 15 minutes.
as you said Pat… Cant you just sit there…
“You Want them, you take them… Or I’ll throw them in the river on the way home!!”… Bet they wouldnt have have asked again…
I thing greater (Mafia/Teamsters etc0 have some sort of hold on this system. On one occassion I complained, told them it was extortion and i would write to every news paper, TV station and congress person ib the country, I was quickly taken by the arm to one side and told to keep my mouth shut because I could annoy some very nasty men.
I did how ever contact WTEN in Albany who investigate scams, they seemed very keen and started doing some investigating, keeping me informed once a week untill after 3 weeks when they stopped and told me “best not to pursue the matter” … methinks someone got to someone in charge there.
$100 that is extortionate but it ain’t new mate. It used to be a regular thing at Liverpool docks and maybe elsewhere.
I posted somewhere else the story of delivering whisky (handball roped and sheeted) in 1966 when I was happy to wait till the next day but they insisted as they were on ship closing bonus. They demanded a fiver for ‘the (labour) pool’. Not having change they sent me to the pub opposite where I had a nice warm pint and watched a World Cup game before sauntering back in time to see some very sweaty dockers throwing the last case off
Sweet revenge for all the times those swine kept me waiting sometimes for days.
It’s all a big scam over here, they charge you to manually unload the truck, if you object and unload it yourself, they still charge for the hire of a pallet truck, if a pallet is over hight and needs splitting, you do it by hand or they charge the fee then use a clamp truck to split it.
My company will pay us to unload upto $100 but after driving for long periods I’d rather sleep, besides which if they will pay a lumper upto $500 to do it they should pay us that amount.
