Sheet 07 · transport
A vehicle is a floor area with a roof height and a tail. Nearly every loading argument comes down to one of those three.
The vehicle 01
Floor areapositions
How many pallet positions stand on the deck, before anything goes on top of them.
The vehicle 02
Roof heighttiers
Whether a second tier goes on at all, worked from the internal figure and not the outside of the box.
The vehicle 03
The tailhow it opens
Rear doors, a curtain or a tail-lift decide which side a pallet comes off and on what.
The slot 04
One bayone vehicle
Booked by email against a reference, a vehicle type and a pallet count.
Goods in vehicles in
A vehicle that turns up as a different type from the one booked is still unloaded, but the difference is written on the booking-in record because it changes how long the bay is held.
Goods out vehicles out
Outbound, the run is staged before the vehicle arrives. Collections are loaded from the lane in drop order; deliveries leave with one set of paperwork per drop, clipped in the order the drops will be made.
08
Last drop to the headboard, first drop by the doors. A run loaded in the wrong order is unloaded in the wrong order, and the second drop pays for it on the pavement. Pallets go nose to tail where the footprint allows and side by side where it does not, and a part pallet is never shrink-wrapped to its neighbour to save a position. Where a second tier will go on, it goes on only if the arithmetic says the height is there.
Inbound, one vehicle stands on one bay at a time. The slot is held for the vehicle type booked and the bay is cleared of put-away stock before it opens, because floor space in front of a bay is the thing every delay is made of. Curtainsiders are stripped from the nearside pallet by pallet, box trailers are worked from the rear on a counterbalance truck, tail-lift drops come off at kerb height onto a pallet truck, and a hand-balled load is stacked onto a pallet on the bay before it moves anywhere.
09
These are the figures the container fill sheet on the front page divides by. They are nominal: an individual unit is measured before a double-stacked load is planned on it.
| Unit | Long | Wide | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 ft box01 | 5898 | 2352 | 2393 |
| 40 ft box02 | 12032 | 2352 | 2393 |
| 40 ft high cube03 | 12032 | 2352 | 2698 |
| 45 ft high cube04 | 13556 | 2352 | 2698 |
| Curtainsider05 | 13620 | 2480 | 2700 |
The fill sheet packs one orientation at a time, which is why it reports a floor rather than a maximum: a mixed load worked by hand across the width of a box will usually beat a straight grid by a position or two. Height is the figure that catches people out. A build that fits the floor twice over still travels as a single tier if twice its height exceeds the internal height, and a curtainsider roof is not a flat ceiling across its whole width.
10
Two files leave the bay for every vehicle: one that stays in the building and one that goes out of the gate with the driver.
Retention is on the records sheet.
A driver who cannot be given a complete set for every drop is not loaded: an unpapered pallet at a receiving point is a pallet that comes back.