Back in Denver this morning. Delivering a load of frozen food at a grocery warehouse. This load involved a drop-and-hook pickup in Illinois, which means the shipper loaded the trailer before I arrived. I brought in an empty trailer and exchanged it for the loaded trailer. As the photo shows, the fork driver who loaded the trailer didn't know that the tall pallet in the back should have been loaded on the right instead of the left. As the truck is rolling down the highway, it's almost always leaning to the right because of the crown in the road. You'd think an idea so simple as this would be known to anyone who ever learned how to load freight with a forklift. That's not the case at all. I see this sort of thing all the time.

It's possible if I'd asked to look inside the trailer the shipper might have broken the trailer seal, let me look in, and then resealed it. Many shippers will deny the request so I usually don't even bother to ask. If I'd seen how this was loaded I'm pretty sure I would have demanded that they switch those two back pallets. In general the driver has the final say on how the trailer is loaded, except for drop-and-hook pickups where the shipper doesn't allow the trailer doors to be opened once they're sealed.