Moving Words – Impossible
Written by Timothy Brady.
”Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Saint Francis of Assisi
This quote describes the moving business and what we do better than any other quote I’ve come across so far.
Think about the process of completing a move. From first shipper contact, the survey, the estimate, the scheduling, the coordinating, dispatching, packing and loading, the driving, the unloading, the unpacking and the post-move activities of claims and evaluation. Every one of these steps is necessary, doing what we know is possible. But how many times within this process do we end up doing the impossible?
Every move has its challenges. Any one of these steps has the potential of presenting the seemingly impossible. From the shipper who has specific scheduling requirements that interrupt the entire flow of the move, to the challenge of coordinating the PADS of several shipments to make up a profitable load. And then there’s the move in and of itself, the items the shipper forgot to mention to the estimator or the move coordinator, the snow and ice storm that hit that wasn’t predicted. Or that item that no one knows how it got into the room but it has to go on the truck. And then there are the Spec Com and electronic loads that have a whole new set of challenges. Here’s one story related to us from a van operator:
”The ‘Impossible’ problem: how to move thousands of little part boxes which had to be kept in sequential order, along with not mixing up any of the parts.”
”My agent took on a move for an electronics firm moving their parts distribution facility from Indiana to Texas. It eventually ended up being a 30-truckload move, and because of the small electronic components being moved, it required some special handling to make sure the product did not get mixed up in transit.”
”I was primarily involved with the set-up of the facility in Texas, but to do this I had to spend time working at origin, so I could understand how their system worked.”
”What we did was to go through the shelved section of the facility in Indiana and videotape the set-up, so we could set up the same way in Fort Worth, as everything had to go back in the exact same order.”
”The small electronic components were stored on shelves in little tray-type boxes, numbered with the parts number–which had to be kept in sequential order. These trays were approximately 4″ wide by 8″ long and 3″ tall, and there were several thousand units. In order to keep everything in the correct sequence, we set up a system. We had people stand side-by-side and hand off the trays to be stacked in large gondolier boxes and kept in the same order. This meant loading the highest-numbered tray in the bottom of the first box and the lowest-numbered on the top of the last box. The gondolier boxes were then numbered on the outside to make sure they were unloaded and all of the boxes of electronic components set on the shelves in correct order. This procedure was very time-consuming and had to be done with great precision to avoid any mix-up, as it would’ve created major headaches and untold expense.”
”The crew at origin was all from the agent, but at destination, I had to work with a crew from temporary services, as agent help wasn’t available. This posed its own challenges, in that two of the guys who showed up were mutes, and one of them was also deaf. However, these two guys ended up being my best help!”
Doing the impossible is what we do, whether it’s moving a parts distribution center for a major electronics company, or moving that elderly couple from where they’ve lived for 80 years to an assisted living retirement facility in the sunny South.
Nelson Mandela summed it up best ”It always seems impossible until it’s done.” So very true in the moving business.
