Up On The Roof

 I had an unfortunate event take place last week. Apparently during the loading process, my dry van trailer was damaged by the fork lift operator.


With this particular shipment that I carry, the clearance is tight to the walls and roof of the trailer. Unknown to the forklift operator, there was a damaged piece on top of the folding racks. The rack itself didn’t cause any damage while loading, however when they went to unload the material and barely lifted up the rack, it poked five holes in the roof of the trailer. Both forklift operators who worked on this shipment had no way of knowing that the rack had a piece of metal protruding out from it on top.


Unaware of this incident, I had left my trailer to be loaded/unloaded as usual and headed to the local truck stop to eat and shower. During my breakfast, I received a phone call from the receiving department telling me that my trailer had been damaged.


I left the truck stop and headed back to inspect the damaged trailer. I needed to fix the holes as I couldn’t take the chance that my load would get wet. Looking at the poked holes… they appeared small in size but I could see the daylight coming in from outside. Luckily, I had a roll of repair tape to make a temporary fix. This would have to work until I could fix it properly when I arrived home in a couple of days. I carried this tape in my truck for years and finally it was being put to good use.