With a jack, some stands, and some ingenuity, you'd be surprised what can get done
I know from personal DIY experience there is a lot that can be done without a lift, but in a lot of cases, not having a lift may turn a 45-minute job into a 2-hour job :(
I'm curious as to how they handle fuel spillage and if they have to reschedule in inclement weather.
Having driven a couple of forklifts and excavators some years ago, yes, this takes quite a load of skill - especially that they basically did not communicate at all.
The ability to refuel a 6000lb. truck in 5 minutes and then drive 400+ miles towing a trailer full of livestock when the outside temperature is below freezing? This is not some edge-case thing but a requirement for a lot of people in the USA.
I think it's much more likely that a) it's not that easy; and/or b) the economic incentive just isn't there rather than people whose livelihood depends on it not being smart enough to figure out that forklifts exist.
1. Businesses don't want to remember a bunch of addresses and who sent what where. Even if it's dropped off at a central lot, you'd still need to arrange further transportation from the lot since a lot of the equipment is broken, doesn't even have tires, or is otherwise not street-legal.
2. Diesel mechanics don't usually work on consumer diesel engines - this is heavy equipment. These shops tend to be located along highways for a reason - they need the wide berths highways provide. You'll have trouble fitting a lot of this equipment in your driveway, much less your garage.
3. The shop insurance situation would be a nightmare.
Many buildings in NYC require people delivering furniture to have certificate of insurance, and to schedule deliveries 48 hours in advance. This creates a lot of overhead, and makes it hard for 2 guys with a truck to compete, as they often lack the administrative skills necessary to operate in this environment
> Several hours into his shift, Dillon was helping guide a rack into place so it could be bolted into the factory floor. The racks are so heavy it takes a team of four people to maneuver them.
The issue is that these guys are moving very heavy shelves by hand, instead of using forklifts.
I would assume that moving heavy equipment around is a pretty standard case in a car factory. It probably shouldn't be lifted by human muscle, which is prone to failure and coordination issues.
I don't know where to start with this. The whole point of the truck is to get the workers! to the site. Said vehicle is also there to support the workers during the day with storage for tools and materials. SO no, the damn truck isn't going to replace a plumber or a/c tech. wow.
So instead of starting up a gas blower, they start up a huge gas generator in the truck instead and run extension cords over the sidewalk from wherever they could park to the jobsite
Gosh, I cannot imagine what would be unappealing about the opportunity for a tradesman to devalue the price of their labor and experience the small-but-inherent risk of catastrophic injury any time a ladder is involved in exchange for the chance to pick up a spare tenner…
(Beyond that, even if they’re already in the area, by the time they pull up the truck, load and unload the ladder and actually do the job, the per-minute rate is probably already a fair bit worse than what they would earn from real customers - it may seem to you like you’re offering an easy job at $10/minute, but it’s probably a tenth of that all in from their perspective.)
I’m not sure about the “via gig work” portion of it, but they do in fact do tool rental delivery and pickup. I rented a Dingo last month (a small digging and leveling machine that you ride behind on a platform) and this was provided as an option. It was not really clear when I looked whether HD employees took it or whether they subcontracted the service out using something like gig work. IIRC the fee was $100 USD each way. That was prohibitively expensive for me and was nearly the price of the 24h rental itself which was around $280 if I remember correctly.
I fortunately own a truck with a hitch (the Dingo came with its own flatbed trailer) but I could theoretically see it as an option for those who didn’t own one. Though at that price you might as well pay the $300 to $400 or so to have a hitch installed on your car instead provided you own one that could tow the Dingo (which most cars could, it’s pretty light).
But do they actually routinely haul shipping containers packed to the brim? And continuously for days on end? There are various people in this thread saying that they can't, either because the specs are not up to par or because the stress risks rapid/early mechanical failure.
Also, while we're at it w/ terrible analogies, consider that many people (including the CEO of the company that got called to clean up this mess) are saying this is going to take weeks. The more accurate analogy is that your F-650 is a dozen tugboats, the truck is not blocking the road, but instead sunk in a marsh an hour away from town (the suez sand bank), loaded w/ 10,000 50lb lead anvils (the containers) and all the manpower you are able to summon in order to move those anvils are a dozen highly paid software engineers (the choppers) who may or may not be inclined to take a week off to help you move the anvils off the truck, and who may or may not be actually physically capable of helping even if they wanted to spend their week hauling hundreds of 50lb anvils by hand. Oh, and you can't just drop anvils in the marsh either, even by accident, due to the risk of poisoning the water supply for the town. And you can't rule out the risk of one of the software engineers tripping and drowning. And you're not even sure your F-650 can pull the truck out without tumbling it on its side or yanking off the front axle even if you empty it out completely.
Crane operators do need to know a lot more than just pushing buttons. If not, cranes tip over, get blown over, and sometimes people die. I've seen it happen.
Truck drivers, not so much. Although, when your truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere during a blizzard and you have a load where you get paid based on timely delivery, I'd bet having some knowledge on the truck's internals would be helpful.
I know from personal DIY experience there is a lot that can be done without a lift, but in a lot of cases, not having a lift may turn a 45-minute job into a 2-hour job :(
I'm curious as to how they handle fuel spillage and if they have to reschedule in inclement weather.
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