drop unto others as you would have them drop for you!!!

no, no, no....get your mind out of the gutter.....i'm not talking about any kind of kinky sexual antics here......unless you wanna include the screwin you take when the driver pullin a trailer fubar's it up and then silently drops it and you are the lucky holder of the ticket to pick it up......we seem to be drawing those numbers a lot here lately.......
this load was a prime example.......

we arrived in kent, washington yesterday afternoon to pick up a load that brings us to indiana and then towards home for the weekend......we dropped our trailer in a door, unhooked and pulled over to the side of the lot to await it being ready to go.........after a couple of hours they came out to tell us the load was ready and on a different trailer than the one we'd brought......as we left out of the building with the paper work, they were locking up and heading home for the day........we hooked up to the trailer, pulled it out from the door and sealed it up and did the usual walk-around, making sure all the lights worked, etc.......as we came up along the driver's side, we noticed a big dent from top to bottom about half way up the side of the trailer.....the metal runner at the top of the trailer was so buckled that you could see part of the roof panel hanging over it........and the bottom metal runner was covered in yellow paint, and dented in pretty badly......and the turn signal assembly below it had been cable-tied back on!!!......we immediately called claims to report the damage so that, a. we could not be held responsible for the damage to the trailer, and b. that if, in fact the hole at the roof line went clear thru, then repairs would need to be done immediately since we had a trailer full of electronics, in kent, wa......which is basically seattle.....and you know what they say about how much it rains in seattle.........and that's true!.......anyway, as most things do when you let corporate in on anything, it turned into a big fiasco, with people from claims, people from the breakdown department and still others from dispatch all jockeying for position as head honcho in what to do about this load..........after a lot of deliberation and phone calls, it was decided that we would have to stay there at the shipper's until this morning and then have them take the freight off the damaged trailer and load it onto the one we had brought in......and, that they would be sending someone out with a tarp to throw over the roof to minimize any rain damage that might be happening......so about 3 hours later, and of course, right in the middle of "glee".....which we hardly ever get to see in real time......here comes a couple of dudes to tarp the trailer.............after more deliberation ...on their part, not ours, we were busy trying to salvage the last few minutes of glee......they decided that it didn't require a tarp after all and in their words, they duct taped the hell out of it and that would be fine till morning.......uh huh..... .well, as anyone who's ever spent an hour or so out in the cold, sleety, winter weather, tryin to get haz mat placards to stick to a cold and wet trailer will tell ya.....duct tape won't stick to it till ya dry it off!!!.....honestly, don't these people even watch red green????........so this morning, at first light , when i poked my head thru the curtain to see what everything looked like, imagine my non-surprise to find the duct tape flyin over the roof of the trailer like a flag of a redneck encampment..........then the shipper finally shows up for the day and is totally surprised to see us still sittin on his dock......he's one of those guys who is never gonna be voted most likely to win mister congeniality anyway......so after a lot of huffing and puffing on his part...... cell phone glued to one ear while he makes wild gestures with the other arm and a lot of foot stamping......he finally takes the load off the damaged trailer and loads it onto the one we had brought in with us yesterday.....now, if we can just get all the talking heads at our company to turn to the same page in the hymnal , maybe we can get out of here and headed to the other side of the world where home is.......so.....another 3 hours or so later we are finally given the ok to hook to the good trailer and head out..........in the mean time while all this deliberation is taking place, an honest to goodness repair truck shows up, complete with a generator that runs all kinds of wonderful tools to straighten metal and rivet metal, and honest to goodness caulking.....and he has the trailer fixed by the time we're ready to leave........anyway......to bring my little diatribe back to the subject......seems that the yellow paint i was telling you was on the side railing of the trailer??????...well, the same yellow paint was on the buckled up cross member on the bottom of the trailer......and what? you might ask is also that same color yellow and could have left this paint there????.....oh, only about a gazillion concrete posts and rocks painted yellow and placed in places to protect objects that you shouldn't back over in parking lots and dock areas.....little inconsequential things like fire hydrants, electrical boxes, drains.......my point is that not even the densest of drivers could have gotten up on this pole, and then gotten off this pole and not have known what they did......and yet, they brought the trailer into that shipper and dropped it, hooked to another and went on their merry way, leaving the problem for the next driver to have to deal with................i'd really like to catch some of these inconsiderate, cowards in the process of dropping trailers like this.......i'm an old hand at duct tape and i know where to stick it to the dry parts.......they'd only be dry till i ripped it back off!