CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 15, 2016

Truck Loaders & You

Dimmer Beach: Before you start to unload your truck(s) in the morning, introduce yourself and give a few key points about the truck:

“Hey guys, my name is Mark and I’ll be taking care of the first two trucks today. All straps break at center and the load bars holding the truss stay up. Not much to these trucks today. Anything I need to know?”

Be helpful, but don’t tell them how to do their job. Point out where handles are on cases, offer to help push or flip. DO NOT count to three for them every time they are about to flip a case.

5 comments:

Ruth Pace said...

You can add the subject of this article, the intricacies of truck loading, to the list of things Ruth didn't know she should worry about in a load in. Reading this article, I'm very pleased to report that I can now probably oversee the proper loading and unloading of a truck with no loss of life or large amount of property damage.
A few key points about this article that I found particularly interesting were the bits about treating those unloading the trucks with basic respect. While the author shouldn't have to include basic respect of employees in this article, as such a thing should be a given, I'm glad that the author took the time to explicitly state it. Entertainment production is a collaborative process, and yet the industry is fraught with more ego than any other, which makes even the most base and necessary (yet complicated and nuanced) task of loading and unloading a truck a potential roadblock in the tightly-run ship that is an effective and efficient load-in/load-out.

Noah Hull said...

I like these articles that give a little insight into touring theater. This one feels like it pairs very nicely with the last set (the ones about the tour that had a truck go missing and the value of staying calm during a crisis). That set was about the trucks screwing up and this one is about how to avoid those screw ups when loading your trucks, it makes for some nice symmetry. Now that that’s out of the way, I never would have expected there to be so much hierarchy in the process of loading a truck. I went back and read the two articles the author mentions at the beginning and between the three of them there’s four or five different jobs, and they’re all done by different people not a small group doing all the jobs at once. I hadn’t expected packing a truck for a tour to be simple but I also wasn’t expecting this many steps.

Alex Fasciolo said...

I always like when this guy’s stuff gets posted on the Greengage, not only because he emphasizes safety and doing things the right way, but because he also incorporates politeness into both of those topics, and sees them all as part of the way to carry yourself as a person throughout the day. These lessons often come through oddly specific circumstances, circumstances that we as people might have to deal with often, but that most people don’t ever even think about as problems that have to be solved, but everyone can take a lesson from how you treat someone who’s loading a truck with you. It’s the same lesson that you’d learn about how to treat people when you’re working in any potentially dangerous, but incredibly routine, tasks. Sure, the mechanics of it change, but the mindfulness and the politeness always need to go with how to get things done the most efficient way. Many of the people who I’ve met at CMU have had a position on life similar to that which is portrayed in these articles, and it’s definitely made me a better person just from being around it, at the very least, it’s something we should all appreciate.

Daniel S said...

I have often told people to play more Tetris to practice for loading trucks. I don’t know how many trucks I have packed and each time I learn something. I haven’t worked a lot with union pushers and loaders. What I can say is this. When I have to pack a truck and I know I’m on a time frame, I always try to make sure I know what is going in the truck where and how it is going to be strapped in. Even when I’m only transporting a couple of things or working with a small crew, I try to make sure that the crew knows what’s going on before we get started. One of the things about loading and unloading trucks that I think everyone knows is that when it rains or things get wet it can get very dangerous very quickly. Having a plan and good communication with pushers and loaders can help minimize the danger factor in these situations.

Scott MacDonald said...

This article makes an important point: when you are working on load-ins and load-outs, it is crucial to keep in mind that everyone there is working for the same goal and needs to work on a team. There are tons of “moving parts” during these parts of a production, so good communication and coordination are necessary for a successful load-in or load-out. Maintaining a good relationship with the local roadies is a huge part of this. Just like you, they are there to do their job and go home, and they definitely don’t want to feel like you’re baby-sitting them. Although I haven’t helped pack trucks, I do have some minimal experience working on load-outs with local crews and there is definitely a certain dynamic you must be conscious of. Just recently I was working an event where to get some equipment out of the venue to the loading dock, the door actually needed to be removed. Well, it was 1am, so the union carpenter who would have to come take it off was definitely not awake. Before venue management could even get Facilities on the phone, the roadies were already taking the door off. Uh-oh, awkward liability situation anyone? Long-story short, everything turned out OK in the end, but this entire problem could have been prevented if people running the even on our side of things had remembered that the door would need to come off again, and know that the roadies would have no plans to wait around all night for some guy to come take it off for them. Although it probably wasn’t the best way for things to go, this situation could have gone worse and luckily the relationship between the venue and the roadies was not compromised.